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Copyright N?._ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HUMAN HARMONIES AND THE 
ART OF MAKING THEM 



HUMAN HARMONIES 

AND THE ART OF 

MAKING THEM 



BY 

S. F. SHOREY 



New York 
Desmond FitzGerald, Inc. 



S&6> 



Copyright, 1914 
By Desmond FitzGbrald, Inc. 



OCT 10 1914 

# C 



3CU379950 



THE AUTHOR'S NOTE 
The Way to Sample this Book 

The art of reading becomes an important art to 
acquire in proportion to the output of printed matter. 
The ability to fairly estimate the contents of a book 
before reading it through is a very important part of 
this art. 

The author's preface should help the reader to do 
this ; so also should his table of contents assist in the 
same way, a thing that they often fail, to any great ex- 
tent, to do. 

Learning from experience that most authors furnish 
no way to quickly get at the contents of their books, 
and that for this reason many a book has been read 
that had better not have been read, also many an ex- 
cellent book has sunk into oblivion for the same reason ; 
I have prepared, to follow this, not only a preface or 
outline chapter, but an index digest of each chapter 
or essay in this book, to enable the one making a pre- 
liminary examination to do so as quickly and as ac- 
curately as possible. 



INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS 

WE ARE EDUCATIONAL LAGGARDS. 

Why we do wrong. 

The thing overlooked by educators. 

The natural right of all to awakening. 

This is all we need. 

Our storehouse of educational material. 

Right conduct should be educated into the feelings. 

Neither selfishness nor unselfishness, but justice. 

Our educational power largely latent. 

Nature driving us into appreciation. 

We are unaware of our possibilities. 

Family squabbles can be avoided. 

Destruction of the institution of marriage. 

WE ARE PRIMITIVE. 

All experience is educational. 
The teacher and the sport. 
Constructive and destructive education. 
Few have the power of self-education. 
Every person's duty to be an educator. 
Ignorant people, stubborn, suspicious, jealous. 
Education the short road to problem solutions. 
Our theories should be educated into practice. 

CAUSE AND EFFECT. 

The great teacher, one who can arouse a knowledge- 
hunger. 

Thoughtkss, emotional and unsuccessful reformers. 

We live in a world of effects. 

Causes more deeply hidden. 

Successful search for cause. 

Sex compatibility. 

All trouble the fruit of ignorance. 

The foolishness of arguments and bad-tempered discussions. 

The less we know the more do we snap, snarl, whine and 
sulk. 

The remedy in our storehouse of knowledge. 

Union in our common knowledge, and strength in union. 

Transfer of knowledge from books to heads. 



viii INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS 

The savage felt crowded. 

He who fights his competitors fears them. 

All society props are crutches of a lame mind. 

THERE IS PLENTY FOR ALL. 

Debt, want and sickness not due to any niggardliness of 

Nature. 
We can't deliver our productions. 
Abundance of raw material, millions of idle hands and 

money. 
But we are too ignorant to use ourselves. 
Our system pays for dishonesty. 
This explains human decay. 
We elect men who can subscribe to our dishonesty and 

foolishness. 
Sickness and poverty due to ignorance. 
Nature's educational supply of funds. 
Better paid teachers, better schools. 
Wisdom, not to know enough to rob, but to know enough 

not to rob. 

THE PENALTY OF DISHONESTY AND WASTE. 

Man born a savage, he hates work, likes play. 

Must be fitted to civil life by education. 

Leaders among men, from among boys taught to work. 

Wealthy parents and their degenerate progeny. 

Undirected energy brings trouble. 

The persistence of energy to become constructive. 

The degenerate making of our trouble regulations. 

Laws and lawyers, the puppet products of their immoral 

surroundings. 
Revolutions the product of suppressed natural expression. 
The shock of reform proportioned to ignorance. 

THE PANORAMA OF RACE UNFOLDMENT. 

The narrow aspect of life seen from the single viewpoints. 
Specialty, monographic, specific, educated heads. 
Our own little side of the street. 
Individualists, Socialists, Idealists, keyhole views. 
The two poles of knowledge, Nature's motor duality. 
Broad general knowledge and the larger estimates of life. 
The illumination of correlative information. 
The external expressions of internal facts of life. 
The historical unfoldment of life — evolution. 
How friendly relations have sprung up among men by 
fighting. 



INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS ix 

Hatred still persisting through lack of mutual under- 
standing. 

Just begun to mix and get acquainted. 

Human differences largely in their forms of expression. 

Most foolishness cures itself by antidote. 

But there is a better way. 

Through our fears, half our energy spent in fighting each 
other. 

FROM WAR TO PEACE. 

This means intelligent reconstruction, without noise. 

We still break up old forms with noise and confusion. 

Nature's onward urge to a larger life. 

Our suffering due to our ignorance of the purpose of life. 

THE REFLEX ACTION, ON HUMAN BEINGS, OF THEIR 
OWN STRUCTURES. 

Community structures, Nature's structures. 

Our social system, its reflex action of injustice criticised. 

This destroys the home harmony. 

We have not learned to use our books. 

More simple books fitted to the requirements of simple 

minds. 
Most family squabbles could be prevented with knowledge. 
We can not appreciate that for which we have put forth 

no effort. 

THE EDUCATIONAL HANDICAP OF MONOPOLY AND 
OF DOGMA. 

The child's birthright of proclivities. 

The source of our predispositions. 

Is it a Divine bestowal, a product inherited, or past life 

experience ? 
Does your theory satisfactorily explain to you the facts? 
Do we go on progressing, and how? 
If not, where does justice, to the individual, come in? 
Have you examined the many guesses, to find the most 

rational? 
Our incubus of progress is the dogma of education. 
Freedom and democracy require a growing intelligence. 
Freedom of individual action must be preserved. 
Monopoly of all sorts must gradually decrease. 
Dishonest men can not be trusted with too much power over 

others. 
Progress must have the competitive spur of both public and 

private schools. 



x INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS 

We do not know what competition, freed from monopoly, 
would do for us. 

Life moves upward through changes made in its forms of 
expression. 

Suppression of this, means decay, atrophy and death, or 
revolution. 

The coward-making effect of dogmatic instruction. 

Our safety in the larger calibered, skeptical student. 

Our educational material an imperfect human product. 

Yet it has a reasonable permanence and is not fully ap- 
preciated. 

THE VALUE OF OUR COMPULSIONS. 

This work-earned feeling of appreciation, the unearned is 
wasted. 

The strength gained from a stern environment. 

All life must work in order to learn: this is Nature's re- 
quirement. 

Lazy species become extinct, lazy individuals have trouble. 

Co-operative work holds together its units by memory and 
feeling. 

Nearly all children like play but dislike work — discipline. 

Vacations explained. 

The menial service of the less evolved. 

Nature's resources to compel constructive action — marriage. 

Our other tremendous impulses to compel right action. 

The splendid discipline of the married life for the average. 

How men and women are held to perform their duties. 

What is the meaning of all this action? 

Why does thoughtless action usually rebuke with mistakes? 

Experiment for yourself, and how. 

The rebuke of the woman's clothing. 

The meaning of that melancholy note, sex expression. 

SOME EVIDENCE OF LIFE'S MORE REMOTE PURPOSE. 

We are engaged in a struggle, the meaning of which we do 

not understand. 
The purpose not to gain these specific and transient things 

of life. 
The temporary pleasures derived from the transient are 

legitimate. 
The wane of interest; its purpose. 

There must be more to follow; our rewards not complete. 
Life keeps us puzzled and guessing and working. 
Nature keeps us from feeling that life is a bunco game. 
The lure of anticipation and pleasures of possession. 
What is it that keeps us moving onward? 



INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS xi 

Familiarity breeds a decline of interest but not contempt. 

This feeling of enough of a thing; our way of escape. 

In this desire for change is the possibility of reconstruction. 

Interest leaves us with exhausted possibility to serve. 

This leaving of the old behind, in everything. 

Old age a concretion of experiences. 

Death lifts us out of our ruts. 

The meaning of these jolts and oadgerings of life. 

The meaning of experience. 

Are we the Creator's playthings? 

This panorama of human disaster. 

Life has no meaning, if this is all. 

Why is no one ever satisfied with what he is doing? 

The small and tangible motive for human action. 

Why children change rapidly. 

A PHILOSOPHICAL DELUSION. 

Our daily opportunities have a concealed purpose. 

Our lives deplorably fleeting. 

The best fruits do not grow in the woods, wild. 

This trying to perfect other things builds ourselves. 

We are flattered into action. 

Concealed purpose of family life. 

Merely a wane of desire, not a delusion. 

Pleasure of use, not the end of pursuit and capture. 

Nature not playing us a false game. 

CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET OF COMMON INTER- 
EST AND HARMONY. 

The plain cause of domestic turmoil. 

Our beliefs a pick-up jumble. 

Few harmonious combinations. 

Much of our difference in the forms of our expressions. 

Limited power of verbal expression. 

Criticise neither too quickly nor too harshly. 

Individual, and group attractions. 

The cohering power of common experience, memory and 

feeling. 
Our idols of habit enslave us. 
The chief value of fashion. 
Love evolves through common experiences. 
The price of freedom is knowledge. 
Nearly all married life a scorching experience. 
Most men must learn their lessons in the matrimonial 

harness. 
Learn and avoid trouble. 

What keeps up ever fresh interest in married life. 
Variety furnishes the spice of life and the education. 



xii INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS 

The average man and wife uninteresting to each other. 

Keep out of ruts, life requires action. 

New affinities, their cause. 

Soul-mates, an ideal, few found in practice. 

Newlyweds, like real estate men, deluded by their feelings. 

Experiences of life carried beyond the wholesome fatigue 

point. 
Feelings kept keen by rational use. 
How the sexes pair off; the beginning of interest. 
What is naturalness, the higher naturalness? 
Higher forms unfold from the lower. 
The modernness of Romantic Love. 

THE APPLIANCES OF LOVE AND THE PURPOSE OF 
HOPE. 

This sex attraction, called love, not a permanent tie. 

Permanence rests more upon a firm prose basis. 

A wise philosophy of life well expressed. 

The abuse of animal pleasures. 

Life a fabric, a web of interdependent items. 

To be permanent, love needs to be substantially nourished. 

The poetry of anticipation, the enthusiasm of feeling. 

The divine fire, and miraculous achievements of life. 

SOME TYPE FEATURES OF SEX. 

Their common field of functioning where mutual interests 

lie. 
Their unlike ways, better cared for by Nature, are older. 
Sex differentiation began with the cell life. 
The disturbance of the change we call progress. 
Life requires continuous readjustment. 
Sex division, a co-operative institute of nature. 
Intuition and reason both make mistakes. 
The fool-catchers of life. 

Women hold firmly to the established order of things. 
Woman a better observer of external forms than man. 
Woman influences building and holding, in everything. 
Not naturally an Anarchist. 

Woman often carried off her feet by sense intoxication. 
Female submissiveness explained; her natural function. 
She loves domineering, theatrical, masculine vigor. 
Proud of man's winning in the battle of life. 
Figuratively speaking, woman likes the dramatic seizure 

of old. 
That tribal instinct or heritage still left in the woman's 

feelings. 
We are evolving into a new life. 



INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS xiii 

Men and women must suffer in leaving the old order behind. 
Why woman is supposed to fit herself into the new home. 
Woman a better Sherlock Holmes, why a better guesser. 
The woman's gain in freedom of expression; its meaning. 
How Nature liberates all life through her forms. 
The plasticity of the woman, but can't stand criticism. 
How absolutely coerced by conventions and dominated. 
A feeling creature rather than a thinking one. 
The woman's way of conquest. 
Her taste often bad in fashions. 

INTUITION AND REASON. 

The two ways of arriving at truth. 

Which way the safer? 

Nature's method for keeping down conceit. 

"Because," and jumping at conclusions. 

Intuition's hidden steps of mentation. 

Bad generalizing and false conclusions. 

Woman secretes the source of her information when she 

knows. 
Woman's character-seeing consciousness, her defense. 
Though often mixed with the impurities of jealousy and 

vanity. 

FROM NOISY IMPOTENCE TO SILENT POWER. 

The aggression of ideals. 

The rapid advance of the woman's ideal due to reading 

more. 
Masculine arrogance and blindness a purpose to serve. 
Woman's coming reign of ascendency; her power as an 

educator. 
Man has not made good in using his opportunities. 
Increase of divorce; spinsters and bachelors. 
The disturbance caused by the growth of our ideals. 
Woman's desire to free herself from the concubinage of 

wealth. 
The masculine blindness of England. 

You can imprison the Suffragette, but not Stjffragettism. 
Vulgar types of rich men and the woman. 
Muscle, brag, yellow conduct and noise. 
The majority of men still prejudiced in favor of ignorance. 
How shown by the schooled man beginning his practice. 
The idea, too intangible for ordinary comprehension. 
Education, the short way to knowledge — not by experience. 
Civilization, precedes practice with theoretical education. 
The savage must learn all he knows from experience. 
Our need is to educate what we know into practice. 



xiv INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS 

THE ORNAMENTAL WOMAN AND ECONOMICS. 

The evidence of life is found in action. 

Consciousness the product of experience and of education. 

Enlarging upon life's interests the possibility of art. 

Old age the effect of lost interests, not its cause. 

Spare time used to create new interests in life. 

A wholesome life requires regular and congenial occupation. 

A public sentiment that backs the lazy, brainless wife. 

Woman breaks for freedom as one of a body. 

HOME INHARMONY, DIVORCE AND ECONOMICS. 
Inharmony on the increase. 
Due to economic injustice. 

Increasing production, followed by increasing want. 
Idle machinery, money, land and men. 
Increasing prices explained. 
Every improvement raises the price of land, then rent, then 

other prices. 
Laziness blinds the race, and trouble opens their eyes. 

WHY SANE AND HONEST MEN DO NOT MARRY. 

Marriage decreasing among the thinking, under a dishonest 

system. 
Fool-catcher institutions the products of a dishonest system. 
The graft plan of nearly all business. 
The art of working the man through the emotions of the 

woman. 
Vulgar display of machine-made wealth a great disturbance. 
We can easily obtain all we need when we know enough. 
The young woman educated for the rich man. 
What happens when she must marry the poor man or stay 

single. 
With her, a high price a measure of quality. 
This woman's love of display. 
Two dollars for a twenty-five-cent meal. 
Ten dollars for a one-dollar hat. 
The foolhardy rather than the brave are the men who 

marry. 
This all the product of dishonest laws. 

VAMPIRES THE PRODUCT OF INJUSTICE. 

Men and women the puppets of their environment. 
Women feel that men must provide or take the consequences. 
Men find that they can not meet the woman's expectations. 
So, men set all sorts of traps for other men to please 

wives. 
What one of this vampire type said to me. 



INDEX DIGEST OF CONTENTS xv 

Her view here expressed. 

She refuses to be a baby-tender or of much assistance. 

How she manages her husband by inflating her own price. 

Making the most of her resources, watered stock. 

She believes this husband-exploiting perfectly legitimate. 

By a modern business measure, who can deny that she is 

right? 
Makes a de luxe edition of herself, out of old battered 

plates. 
This art of flimflamming the timid and ignorant with 

glamour. 
Modern married life and high-priced shoddy, from a com- 
mon source. 
She sees life as a game; mortals must eat or be eaten. 
She prefers to eat, and pay as little as possible. 
Prefers to live on borrowed capital in the hope of not 

paying the principal. 
The sporting side of life, wine, women and the theater. 
The popularity of the Rubaiyat; its modern fitness. 
Many women of this type and men to correspond. 
Woman getting ahead in the selfish use of the good things 

of life. 
A great many do not think marriage a wise undertaking. 
The woman a fool not to marry, the man a fool if she does. 
The vampire and sentimental courts. 

Price glamour, the game of the shoddy-vendor in all ages. 
Men and women of much maral stamina refuse to take part 
These forms of deceit are always a failure in the final 

clean up. 



THE OPENING 

Outline Chapter 

THAT there are many social and economic prob- 
lems in the world for human solution, is a matter 
of common knowledge. But, is not this belief 
that there are as many, or nearly as many causes as 
problems, a false one? It is because of this belief, how- 
ever (that each effect, called a problem, is preceded by 
an immediate and specific cause), that reform forces 
undertake the solution of their problems by single items, 
— attack each by itself alone, in a retail way. 

And does not this explain why it is that their efforts 
meet with so little success ; why their treatments fail to 
effect permanent cures ; and for the same reason that 
most surgical treatments of cancer fail? In neither 
case has the cause been reached and removed, so the 
problem returns ; the roots are there and the cancer 
reappears. 

Is it not very plain that all these surface effects called 
problems and disease can, for all practical purposes, be 
traced to a common cause, and this the one of ignorance? 

In order, then, to be able to locate cause and thus to 
effect solutions and cures by the wholesale, the first prob- 
lem to attack and solve is the one of ignorance ; united 
attention must be given to the matter of education. 



2 HUMAN HARMONIES 

For, before educators and reformers can see clearly 
that all these uncomfortable effects, called problems, 
have a common cause, these problems can not be intelli- 
gently and permanently solved. All this sense world 
that we contact is merely a maze of effects, and could 
we go far enough back in search of the cause we have 
every reason to believe that we would find them all 
emanating from one cause. We know this in proof, that 
every cause gives rise to more than one effect. The 
first cause, however, eludes human grasp. But for all 
practical purposes in reform work, we need to go back 
only to ignorance to see that this is the cause of all 
these troublesome problems of ours which we are attack- 
ing on the surface with foolish charity, punishments 
and medications, without decreasing them in the least. 
The great need of the world, then, is an educational 
campaign covering the entire globe. There is abundance 
of information in our books, but the need is to put this 
information into human heads ; till this is accomplished, 
reform and universal suffrage must remain a joke. 

The average woman of to-day is quite as competent 
to use the ballot as the average man, but this voting on 
both sides and by both sexes is merely a guess. 

Not only are the masses enslaved but the entire world 
is kept in darkness by lies and dogmas of instruction 
and the private appropriation of the natural funds of 
education ; and this is allowed simply because men are 
not yet enlightened. We will grant you that, so far as 
we know, the world has never seen an age of greater 
mental activity than the present, but this activity is 



OUTLINE CHAPTER 3 

indefinite, — an age of mental energy awakened, turned 
loose and running wild. Dishonesty is a tremendous 
social disturbance, but it has a cause and its cause is 
ignorance; dishonesty is merely an effect. 

Men will be honest and truthful in the exact propor- 
tion that they are wise — to know much, is to know that 
no man can afford to be either dishonest or untruthful. 

The solution of this problem of ignorance is not so 
difficult a matter as it is ordinarily conceived to be. 
The seventy-five per cent of human beings who have not 
yet learned to think could be taught; there is a way, and 
there exists, when appropriated and properly used, 
plenty of means. 

There are to-day not more than two persons out of 
every ten who have a good knowledge of the elements 
of a single science, whereas, at least seven out of every 
ten should have, and could easily have a wide knowl- 
edge of the elements of all the sciences. And if children 
had parents who knew enough to interest and awaken 
them before the school age, the acquisition of this knowl- 
edge would be a simple matter, or if they could be prop- 
erly directed, led and awakened in school after this age, 
nearly as good results could be obtained. 

But they are denied this right in both places ; children 
are parenting children, and leaving their heads empty 
to fill up on mental garbage. 

Domestic turmoil is not due to one cause, and fights 
among men to another. War, the white slave traffic, the 
prison, the slum ; sickness, poverty, dishonesty and bad 
laws are all the products of this one cause, of ignorance. 



4 HUMAN HARMONIES 

Men and women stop fighting the moment they know 
enough to see that it does not pay. Co-operation or 
harmonious operation will increase among men, in 
quantity and in quality, in the exact proportion that a 
deep and wide common knowledge brings mutual under- 
standing and sympathy — human beings fight because 
they do not understand each other. 

We are conditioned; there is inherent in all life a 
central awakening aim; a single, determined, unswerv- 
ing, educative purpose that is cosmic in its action 
through all life. The solution of human problems, both 
individual and social, always follows as fast as human 
beings come to understand this aim. 

There are many problems in the world, but only be- 
cause we are confused do there seem to be many causes ; 
there is really but one that demands any very serious 
consideration, and this one is the cause problem of other 
problems, — the problem of ignorance. 

This is the master problem, and as fast as this one is 
solved the solution of the others will follow automat- 
ically; or, rather, they will cease to appear, for the 
reason that their cause has been removed. 

To-day, Nature is working out this problem of human 
betterment by allurement and by force, with compara- 
tively little assistance from those whose condition she is 
improving, for the reason that these do not yet even 
half understand. 

Because they do not generalize very much, they are 
unable to see that Nature has any central aim; to the 
less evolved, life is chaotic and matter dead; men learn 



OUTLINE CHAPTER 5 

to see long before they learn to think, to talk long before 
they learn to listen or have the patience to listen; it is 
by listening and thinking, however, that we are able to 
read Nature's symbolical language. 

In spite of the blinding effect on the average person 
of surface appearances, there is running through Nature 
a deep order, — an order that has an evident purpose in 
view. All life is polarized, — ranged in pairs of positive 
and negative factors. This fighting duality (operating 
almost entirely independently of human consciousness) 
is the motor of the onward and upward moving life — re- 
move this and life ceases. 

It is this (found in all the lower forms of life) that, 
when it reaches human beings, divides them into two 
great parties of mutually awakening conflict ; one hang- 
ing back and conserving, and the other leading in the 
onward move and liberalizing. 

Applying this to our own life we find it grouping us 
under two heads only. We have but two political 
parties, but two religious parties or groups ; because 
there are but two kinds of people in this world, out of 
which to compose these groups, however much most per- 
sons may be deceived into thinking there are more, by 
the innumerable individuals and groups of individuals 
ranged on the two sides. It is their names and their 
other tangibilities, their sense measures by which we 
know them; their flags, symbols, badges and idols that 
confuse, delude and mislead us. 

On the conserving side, we find lined up the opulent 
and better satisfied ; those who, because of the privileges 



6 HUMAN HARMONIES 

it gives them, desire to keep things as they are to pro- 
tect these privileges. Co-operating with these, we find 
all well-established creeds, the courts, the army, the 
police, prisons, charities, and a great number of un- 
thinking, negative, timid people whom the conserving 
side controls — people who, unguided by principles, like 
to side with what looks like success, — to be with the more 
comfortable, respectable, orthodox ones ; and they grow 
largely by imitation. 

This duality lines up on the opposite side of change, 
the progressive type, the less comfortable ones, — those 
who are not getting very satisfactory results from this 
battle of life ; these and their sympathizers, both are the 
smashers of old forms, the iconoclastic, the democratic, 
the free-thinker, the socialistic, anarchistic, those of the 
intractable and infidel type (that is, persons unfaithful 
to the old forms of the existing order) — in fact, all pro- 
gressive educators and scientists, also inventors ; all 
those who would effect changes. We find ranged on 
this side all those who have been made to suffer through 
the injustices to which over-conserving inevitably leads. 

Evolution, however, gradually brings into existence, 
principally through education, an increasing number of 
men having a dual understanding. These constitute a 
dual type composed of men sufficiently scientific to see 
the value of both the conservative and the progressive 
side ; seeing this they operate on both sides, — they are 
wise enough to serve two masters through the forces of 
Nature. They realize that men must build, on the one 
hand, and for a time, conserve and use this building. 



OUTLINE CHAPTER 7 

But on the other hand, they realize that no progress 
can be made without replacing old forms with new ones, 
— by discarding the antiquated, and adopting modern 
types to take their place. 

The importance of this is already in our educational 
theory, but in practice it operates altogether too slowly. 

To-day this change is blindly fought out between the 
two sides at too great an expense; one side, prompted 
by their love of power and comfort, selfishly fight to hold 
the old ; and the other side, prompted by their suffering, 
caused by the injustices imposed by old forms, are fight- 
ing to discard them. This is a very expensive war- 
fare; both sides are unjust and are being slowly driven 
to see the better way of intelligent co-operation — their 
efforts are coming slowly to merge. The difficulty, how- 
ever, lies in the fact that this merging is too slow when 
there is always before us such a plain, simple way to 
increase the rapidity of the process, — which is as fol- 
lows: 

Progress follows in the wake of theories, we improve 
by realizing our old ideals and building new ones, but 
progress is ever in the direction of a more pronounced 
democracy, one that brings continually greater jus- 
tice to the masses ; this improves morals and conduct, 
and increases happiness. But all this improvement 
must come through enlightenment. The sacrifice of in- 
dividuals by their community, with prison life, the 
degradation of charity and other injustices will all dis- 
appear with the incoming, or acquisition of intelligence. 

There are many problems to solve and for which many 



8 HUMAN HARMONIES 

solutions are offered. This volume is not a plea for any 
of the usual methods, for the reason that there are not 
many causes, — there is but one, and this the one of 
ignorance. The plea, then, of this volume is made for 
enlightenment, for education in its broadest sense, for 
culture, a search for truth and co-operation among men 
to this end. Human beings will understand what is best 
to do as fast as they know the truth. 

Domestic turmoil is a part of our great confusion; 
read the book and criticise it ; be fair but not squeamish. 



HUMAN HARMONIES AND THE ART 
OF MAKING THEM 

CHAPTER I 
We Are Educational Laggards 

IT is plain to be seen that, as a rule, when men and 
women do the wrong thing it is because they lack 
the mental equipment that would enable them to 
do the right thing. 

Of course, they may be forced into wrong conduct by 
their social environment. This, however, is but a re- 
flection of this same lack in themselves — a product of 
their own foolishness. 

Obvious as this fact is, however, its tremendous prac- 
tical importance is overlooked by educators and re- 
formers. In education we find too little reform; and 
reform., instead of being educational and successful, is 
largely a failure, for the reason that it is attempted 
with punishment and charity; both of which are de- 
grading, instead of reforming. 

It is not difficult to believe that about all the wrong 
conduct in the world is due to a wrong start in life ; bad 
parental conditions, neglected home training, stupid 
schooling — ignorant parents and teachers. 
9 



10 HUMAN HARMONIES 

And about all the help that any person (even the 
weak-willed) needs in life is: first, encouragement, then 
to be awakened to a consciousness of his own possibili- 
ties ; helped to see the importance of his own improve- 
ment. This awakening belongs of natural right to every 
human being, but even this is denied by most homes and 
schools — the awakened individual will care for his own 
betterment, — he will become self-made, and can very well 
dispense with the University course of schooling. Why 
it is that we find so many going wrong in the world, is 
because they have been denied what is due them from 
their homes and their schools. In our books we have 
stored an abundance of self-help information, — splendid 
ideals of conduct that we do not succeed in educating 
into practice. 

The bulk of the wrong of which men and women are 
guilty, against both themselves and others, is due much 
more to what they do not know than to what both they 
and others think they know, but fail to perform. 

There is always something we do not know, that be- 
longs with what we think we know but can not practice 
— it is not practical for the reason that more needs to be 
known. 

Knowledge can not become truly practical till it is 
sufficiently broadened to embrace will and feeling. All 
gain of knowledge strengthens the will and corrects the 
feelings. 

Much of the conduct of life is wrong because it is 
that into which men and women are led by their feelings, 
feelings that are determined by their inherited pro- 



EDUCATIONAL LAGGARDS 11 

pensities, — the part of themselves that belongs to a 
past age of the world — the savage in them. For the 
reason that they have been incompletely instructed, 
imperfectly fitted into modern life by education, a large 
part of their conduct is merely instinctive; what little 
they know of the new has not yet become a matter of 
feeling, it is, therefore, inoperative, h : 

Intelligence equips the individual with higher motives 
for his conduct; with intelligence he both knows and 
feels what is best to do. 

Selfishness stands at one extreme of human conduct 
and unselfishness, when it becomes self-sacrifice, at the 
other. As motives, when compared with the one of 
perfect justice, they are both primitive and somewhat 
foolish. I have natural rights, but so have you, and no 
wise man will deprive another of his rights, nor will he 
degrade himself by accepting of the fruits of sacrifice 
from another. Selfishness and unselfishness are edu- 
cational forms used in the kindergarten stage of human 
growth and instruction — that are left behind by men 
and women of larger growth. 

Charity is made necessary by injustice, and injustice 
is the product of ignorance. This secret of human har- 
mony, success and happiness that can be found in en- 
lightenment, is but dimly seen by even the most in- 
telligent among us, and is almost entirely hidden from 
the not well informed majority. 

There is an unnecessary waste of energy in the world, 
as well as too much suffering and turmoil, when there 
is stored in our books abundance of information to pre- 



12 HUMAN HARMONIES 

vent most of this waste, and some way should be found 
to so place this information in human minds as to make 
it operative. 

The greater part of bad and stubborn tempers, dis- 
honesty, fear, laziness, poverty, sickness and crime 
would disappear from among us, if in some way the 
grade of human intelligence could be raised twenty per 
cent. 

The world has accumulated a large amount of educa- 
tional information that it does not yet use ; its power 
is largely a latent one, little more than a possibility, 
for the simple reason that we lack the home and the 
school equipment to either place this information in the 
minds of the rising generation, or to so stir, enthuse 
and awaken the pupil that he will do this for himself 
after leaving the school. 

Even philanthropic educators are yet far from being 
able to see how, by means of enlightenment, the majority 
could be changed physically, intellectually and morally, 
into men and women of as high a grade as are now 
the best among us, and what this would do for every- 
body. 

Than this one of education, no other undertaking 
among men so much deserves united effort, irrespective 
of race, nationality, color, creed or politics. 

The part of this process that is needed more than any 
other, is the stirring, enthusing, spurring, awakening. 
Nothing better could be inaugurated than a national, or 
even a world lecture campaign, carried out for the sole 
purpose of creating a general knowledge-seeking en- 



EDUCATIONAL LAGGARDS 13 

thusiasm; reaching socially, from top to bottom; it is 
this that would bring peace and progress. 

In spite of the praise of our flatterers, educationally 
speaking, we are about two-thirds asleep ; dull, indif- 
ferent, pessimistic, afraid, discouraged and lazy. We 
are also too fatalistic. Our too great belief in the un- 
avoidable makes inevitable that which is not in the least 
necessary. 

This is a time during which Nature is trying to drive 
us to appreciate our educational possibilities, — trying 
to awaken us to the very great benefits to be derived 
from its voluntary application, and we must suffer just 
so long as, and to the extent that we fail to respond. 

All the inharmonies of our lives tyrannize over us in 
the proportion that we allow them, in our ignorance, to 
do so. Almost every person can see that he has fallen in 
his life far short of his possibilities ; for the reason that 
education did not play its part with him as well as it 
might have done. There are few of us who do not feel 
that (had we been taught as we might have been taught, 
and as early in our lives as we might have been taught, 
what the world had to teach) our lives might have been 
lived much more efficiently and satisfactorily. 

Because he does not know what he can make of and 
do with himself, the average person learns compara- 
tively little in life; he takes to the long, hard, ex- 
pensive way of experience; he loafs away his spare 
time and waits to be driven by his needs or blindly en- 
ticed by his feelings into all sorts of uncomfortable 
situations ; he lacks both the knowledge and the stamina 



14 HUMAN HARMONIES 

to improve and make use of himself and his surround- 
ings. 

In this lack of the proper information we find the 
cause of the larger part of the present increasing family 
inharmony and divorce. Men and women do not know 
how to so keep pace with progress as to meet co-opera- 
tively the requirements of life's highest functionings. 
The cause here is the same as that of social and business 
inharmony, — it is a lack of practical information. 

Even under present unjust social conditions most of 
this family squabble, divorce, crime and tragedy could 
be avoided, if each of every married pair knew what they 
could do within the confines of their own home by cul- 
tivating within themselves the attractions of personal 
worth, and between themselves the attractions of com- 
mon interests; to build between themselves the affinity- 
tie of things; to acquire a knowledge of such items of 
life as interest both, to cultivate mutual loves, to volun- 
tarily set about the education of the two in company; 
they should be companions, comrades, chums. This 
could be accomplished to a very large extent, inde- 
pendent of or in spite of, social surroundings that would 
tend to prevent harmony. 

Of course, as a first step in the interest of home and 
family harmony each should learn not to expect too 
much of the other. 

The close observer has very good reason to believe 
that never in the history of the world has there been 
a case of perfect harmony in the married life. In fact, 
marriage is but a part of one great plan to educate 



EDUCATIONAL LAGGARDS 15 

through experience ; in marriage the intent seems to be 
not to have too much difference but just enough between 
the two for this purpose of making them think and act 
without separation. 

In cases where ignorance is great on either side, this 
supply of diff erence will be too great for the purpose. „ • 

The intent of the law seems to be that through en- 
lightenment the supply of inharmony in the married life 
shall be kept down to where, in the majority of cases, 
the happiness will be greater than the misery. This 
must be so or marriage would soon cease to exist as an 
institution. 

The destruction of this institution, through this in- 
creasing disturbance, due to educational neglect, is what 
seems to be rapidly coming about. This unbearable un- 
comfortableness is rapidly approaching the majority of 
cases, and with the present impetus the tendency is to 
go beyond the majority of cases to the disruption of 
the established institution of marriage. So that if the 
present order is to be preserved, the cause of this 
growing inharmony must be found and removed. The 
only alternative to this is to wait for the gradual dis- 
integration of the present order, and from the wreckage, 
for the evolution of a new institution to regulate the 
association of men and women. 



CHAPTER II 

We Are Primitive 

EVERY experience of life may be considered, in its 
effect, educating and all men educators. There 
are, therefore, specifically speaking, many kinds 
of education and of educators in the world; it is this 
contact that stirs up variety of thought. 

But for convenience of treatment these kinds admit 
of being divided into : " Teachers and Reformers," 
proper, with their constructive purposeful instruction, 
on the one hand ; and on the other hand, the sports with 
what they have to offer. The sports have the advantage 
over constructive educators of being able to reach and 
interest young people and children through their primi- 
tive traits, — their play, their desultory, instinctive 
proclivities. This is why sports are, as instructors, 
though often leading their flock backward and down- 
ward, so much more successful in their line than educa- 
tors, properly so-called, are in theirs : sports lead their 
followers over the line of least resistance. Nearly all 
persons will not only take sporting education willingly, 
but they will also cheerfully pay well for it, while 
education proper requires a sacrifice on the part of 
others in the way of public support, in taxes. Educa- 
16 



WE ARE PRIMITIVE 17 

tion meets with resistance by acting along new race 
lines of mental effort. 

To interest a person is about all there is to his educa- 
tion, and in doing this, the constructive educator will 
succeed better by keeping in mind the sport in his pupil 
— the primitive, the barbarian. This is what educators 
are slowly learning to do. The learner must be 
led out of the old and into the new, partly over old 
tracks. 

An intense desire to learn should be awakened, be- 
cause this embraces nearly all that is needed to create 
human affinities and harmonies in the world. Successful 
co-operation in all the various departments of life, in- 
cluding co-operation between the man and the woman in 
their home life, depends very largely upon that general 
knowledge, wide information and liberal culture which 
give mutual understanding. 

Comparatively few of those who have missed the home 
and the school awakening have that within them which 
enables them to awaken themselves ; they do not, there- 
fore, set about with any very deliberate purpose to learn 
much in life ; they do not see the importance of doing 
so with sufficient clearness to overcome their dislike for 
effort ; they invariably squander their spare time. 
| There are thousands of better things in life to think 
( about, to work for and to enj oy, than those in which 
/ the majority are interested. 

Hence, it becomes the duty of every awakened person 
to offer to others some of that which he has learned. 
Without obtrusiveness, every well-informed person can, 



18 HUMAN HARMONIES 

by giving to others, become a center of radiating in- 
fluence. 

The mental outlook of each of most married pairs is 
extremely narrow, consisting largely of opinions picked 
up from different sources. Many of these opinions held 
by one of the pair contradict those of the other, and it 
is very often that neither has the truth of the matter 
in dispute. 

Narrow people — those with but meager information — 
can hardly be other than dogmatic and uncomfortable, 
difficult to live with, being, as we most often find them, 
egotistical, selfish, fussy, stubborn, suspicious, jealous, 
disputatious, easily offended, sulky, intolerant and 
childish. 

Hence, it is rarely that there can be found a pair 
among the meagerly informed majority, both of whom 
are willing to do their part in life. It requires no very 
careful observer to see that one of the two of a very 
large majority of wedded pairs is a selfish shirk or an 
uncomfortable fault-finding ignoramus, blinded by a 
large supply of egotism. In not a few cases, it happens 
that one of the pair thinks he or she is the aristocrat of 
the combination, by way of some illustrious eighty-fifth 
cousin and has married the other largely for accomoda- 
tion, — more as a matter of ornament than use. This is 
decidedly primitive and snobbish. 

There is but one kind of aristocracy that can win per- 
manently, and they who are of this one must be chiefly 
characterized by knowledge, by a strong will, by good 
work and by high moral character ; these qualities can, 



WE ARE PRIMITIVE 19 

in most cases, be cultivated by the persons themselves ; 
and they will be by every individual the moment he 
awakens. 

With a short course of the right instruction, not less 
than seven pairs out of every ten could be given the key 
to affinity-making. 

Again, the one great need of the world to-day is 
educational awakening. This needs repetition, and the 
task, even if not an easy one, could be accomplished, 
were it possible to awaken an interest sufficiently wide- 
spread and intense to set in motion a united and de- 
termined effort on the part of educators and men of 
means. And because it is through enlightenment that 
the best possible way can be found to the solution of 
our present-day problems, this work of enlighten- 
ment stands at the head of all needed undertakings. Of 
course, there are open to the world two other ways to 
solve these problems ; one through a long-continued 
agony of slow, involuntary evolution and the other by 
breaking up the old order with a destructive revolution. 
We can select the way that suits us best, but the way of 
education is the only short, inexpensive and comfort- 
able way. 

If, therefore, the comparatively few who monopolize 
the larger part of the opportunities of the world (and 
thereby control about all of the wealth) could by some 
miracle become suddenly wise (merely for their own 
best interest of happiness, if for nothing else) this cam- 
paign of educational awakening would not be long de- 
layed. The danger needs to be educated out of the in- 



20 HUMAN HARMONIES 

dividual. It is the individual who needs attention ; every 
person has coiled up within himself possibilities, and he 
is surrounded by opportunities of which he is entirely 
unconscious. 

Education holds in waiting for the human family 
rewards of happiness that are to-day beyond our 
dreams. Were we able to use our present educational 
supply; were the means available to meet the expense 
which would be necessary to equip the minds of the 
majority with practical knowledge to the extent that 
our books are stored with theoretical knowledge, this old 
world would then be quite the Millennium world, of 
which we are now dreaming and for which we are 
fighting, instead of spreading enlightenment to obtain it. 

The entire world stands very much in need of the up- 
lifting power of higher ideals. 

For the purpose of educating these into practice 
there is need of great teachers. The greatest teacher, 
then, is the one who can inspire his pupils ; one who can 
fill them with a burning desire to know something and 
to do something; one who can arouse in them a per- 
manent knowledge-hunger, an enthusiasm, a moral am- 
bition that remains with them continuously after they 
leave the school. The thing of most value in the teacher 
is the ability to awaken the powers of the pupil — to 
make him work and unloose his constructive energy. 



CHAPTER III 

Cause and Effect 

AVERY large part of all the money and effort 
expended in trying to reform and to educate 
neglected men and women is wasted, for the 
reason that the work is not sufficiently fundamental, not 
wisely directed. Reformers, as a class, feel more than 
they think, their reform is sentimental, ephemeral, 
patchwork reform ; they lack the power to generalize 
that a thorough scientific education would give them; 
so we find them entangled in a maze of surface effects 
which they mistake for causes and among which they 
expend the larger part of their efforts fruitlessly. 

We live in a world of effects, entirely. From which 
it is impossible for the human being to so disentangle 
himself as to see the first cause of anything. But the 
more we learn to generalize the farther back can we 
wend our way. And as we do this, we find that in 
proportion to the distance retraced, these effects grow 
less in number and ever more fundamental in their 
power, as causes, to produce other effects. Hence, so 
far as we can see, every cause is, first, an effect, func- 
tioning as a cause to give rise to more than one other 
effect; these in their turn, also become causes. It is 
this that enables the flowers to bloom, and man to grow 
21 



22 HUMAN HARMONIES 

(larger) ; but it is, also, what keeps this surface world 
in which we live, bristling with effects that we are trying 
to sort, classify and understand, meanwhile fighting 
among ourselves. 

Let us now seek a way back through this blinding 
maze of effects for the purpose of locating and remov- 
ing the cause of the principal part of this surface tur- 
moil. 

We have many reasons to suspect that we are misled 
and confused by appearances, and thus prevented from 
seeing realities ; or in other words we have not learned 
to look beneath the surface for the more fundamental 
causes of everyday effects. 

We can, however, prove very satisfactorily to our- 
selves that most of our problems have their rise in a 
common cause. For if we can spare the time to feel 
our way back among these effects, we find them giving 
way one after another to effects more remote and less 
in number, till we reach one that can be demonstrated 
to be the cause of all these difficulties and inharmonies 
of life — the one cause of all our problems. 

This cause is simply ignorance, and as fast as that 
is removed will our troubles flee ; this is the only way 
to a wholesale, sweeping solution of problems. Even 
the problem of laziness can be thus solved, because 
knowledge stimulates human action reflexively. Men 
become more ambitious and active, and will accomplish 
more, in the proportion that they learn more; they see 
more to do, and enjoy their work. 

Ignorance is the one cause of poverty, sickness, dis- 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 23 

honesty, disputes, fights, suffering and inharmony. It 
is found among all sorts of human beings regardless of 
sex. Ignorance is the cause of greed and selfishness and 
of every crime in the catalogue of crimes ; it is then, of 
course, the cause of marriage inharmony, and is a mat- 
ter with which sex has little to do, and takes no 
part. 

Of course, in our discussions of family quarrels, we 
make considerable of that temperamental adaptability 
which we call sex compatibility or affinity. And where 
a case of this kind is found, we also find that trifling 
differences do not so easily give rise to disturbance. 
There is, of course, more sympathy to smooth the way ; 
it enlists the feelings and holds the attention — it is but 
another form of this same mutuality or common feeling 
mentioned above. 

But whatever the immediate or precipitating cause of 
any dispute may be, in threading our way back to find 
the fundamental cause we come upon ignorance on the 
part of somebody ; parent, teacher or of the individual 
himself. 

There is perhaps no one of the immediate causes that 
gives rise to more family quarrels than physical dis- 
comfort, — sickness. Sickness, however, is but the reap- 
ing of the fruit of ignorance; it is the reprimand of 
a lack of knowledge, practical ignorance. 

The doctor habit, like the law-suit habit is, in its final 
analysis, but little more, if any more, than the habit of 
an ignoramus ; due to a lack of information that might 
easily have been obtained. Two-thirds of all the sickness 



£4 HUMAN HARMONIES 

and as large a proportion of the law-suits in the world 
are due to this cause that could be easily removed. 

In money matters it is the same. Financial failure is 
due to a lack of that information which every individual 
in the community could easily and should take time to 
obtain. The less a person knows, the more helpless is 
he in every way ; the more uncomfortable as an associate 
do we find him in any walk of life. The less a person 
has of true knowledge, or wisdom, the more does he find 
to fight about ; the more quickly can he detect slight 
differences of opinion, and over these the more stub- 
bornly will he dispute ; the more excited and loud will 
he become in his arguments; the more grossly will he 
lie and the more persistently will he contend for the 
final word. 

Among common men, in fact, there are few who 
can enter into any form of helpful discussion without 
turning it at once into an argument, in the course of 
which both parties usually indulge in foolish personal 
remarks, and quit in a bad temper. This is a waste of 
time and of good health, that will kill success in almost 
anything. Nor is it needful for any writer to spare 
himself, the more foolishness he has passed through the 
more certain does he feel of the truthfulness of what 
he writes. 

This information has been preserved for us and 
passed along in books ; it is a very rich storehouse of 
knowledge, a very great privilege that human beings of 
to-day hold over our ancestors of three thousand years 
ago. This, the only short road to knowledge, is not 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 25 

yet very well understood and appreciated. Its great 
importance must yet be learned. 

Knowledge is the inclusive remedy for domestic snarls 
and snarling as well as for these same things found in 
all departments of life, but this remedy must be obtained 
and applied by an expenditure of energy ; its practical 
appropriation requires effort. 

All the destructive fights of life, in all times and in 
all places, have decreased, and they will continue to 
decrease in an exact proportion to the amount of 
knowledge that men and women hold in common, and 
to which they give common consent, on which they agree ; 
in proportion to the universality of eduction. The less 
they hold in common the weaker do we find them ; " in 
union there is strength," and in common knowledge there 
is union ; — knowledge is, also, the true patriotism. 

We do not solve our problems by merely accumulat- 
ing educational material; by experimenting, discover- 
ing and booking information ; this is not even one-half 
of the program; the important part, and by far the 
larger and the practical part, consists of transferring 
this information into human heads. 

It is for the reason that the world has not learned to 
educate, that we are yet to have wars ; in the realm of 
ignorance, war is inevitable. 

This globe was once inhabited by warring tribes ; 
to-day, tribal warfare has almost ceased, and national 
lines will become gradually obliterated by enlighten- 
ment. In knowledge we find the great cohering power. 
The moment any person knows much he can see too 



26 HUMAN HARMONIES 

many interesting things that ought to be done to throw 
away his time in fighting, either at home or abroad. 

One need not be a very close observer to see that the 
person who is always ready to contend is one who has 
an extremely narrow view of life and its peaceful possi- 
bilities. In business, he who is always fighting his com- 
petitors is evidently one who fears them. In the first 
place he is greedy and questions his ability to satisfy 
his greed while competing in an open market. So we 
find him resorting to many dishonest methods. And 
among these dishonest methods, the most dastardly, 
cowardly and criminal is the form we call the trust; 
this monopoly of the opportunities of others that forces 
them to remain in idleness. The next in rank of infamy 
is graft ; the form of business robbery that acts under 
the guise of service, either public or private. All 
society props and unions are the crutches of fear that 
return to the individual far too little help for his time 
and money. 

The cause of greed, of strife, and of dishonesty, is 
fear ; the cause of fear is ignorance, and the cause of 
ignorance is a lack of energy properly applied. For all 
practical purposes, we can call this latter laziness ; it 
does not need to be called by a milder term. For all 
practical purposes in our search for the cause of these 
inharmonies of life, lack of purposeful effort, to gain 
and apply information, is as far back as we need to go. 
All the inharmony problems in this wide world are due 
to this lack of effort which allows empty heads or 
shoddy-filed heads to exist. 



CHAPTER IV 

There is Plenty for All 

IT is not due to any niggardliness of Nature that the 
majority of the human family are struggling with 
debt and want and sickness. 

It is due to the fact that instead of producing things 
needed and distributing them honestly, delivering them 
where they belong, they who form this majority spend 
a large part of their time in idleness, in stealing from, 
and in other ways trying to get the best of each 
other, and in preventing the despoiled from stealing it 
back. 

There is abundance of raw material in the world to 
make that which would supply every human need; to 
do this, there are millions of idle hands eager to be 
employed; there is now machinery enough to multiply 
the productive power of these hands ten times ; there 
are, also, the conveyances of distribution ; millions of 
currency, — money sufficient in amount to effect all 
needed exchange of products, but held out of use in 
congested bank vaults. 

These social, these co-operative functions of life de- 
pend for their proper discharge upon the general in- 
telligence ; of this we have so far gained comparatively 
little ; it is this that explains our present suffering from 
27 



28 HUMAN HARMONIES 

universal stagnation. The natural opportunities on 
which this energy should be acting productively are held 
up by monopolies. 

It not only deprives others, but it is a great injury to 
the man himself, who, by some form of monopoly, holds 
out of use many times the amount sufficient for his 
personal needs and his public enterprises. 

Our average practical life is the operation of our 
average knowledge, our average ideal and our average 
morality ; these are struggling upward against the de- 
moralizing influence of a system that pays men to be 
dishonest instead of honest. This system is the greatest 
enemy with which progressive education has to contend. 
It is this that holds the average helpless voter, in his 
intelligence, his ideals and his morality, where he can 
admire the cheap sophistry and platitudes of the 
demagogue ; where he desires to emulate the greatest 
robber among us, — the man who, by means of the trust, 
a monopoly, deprives of their natural share of produc- 
tion millions of men and women. It is this low order of 
ideal, this lack of intelligence, that explains why the 
average man is able to look upon the grafter without 
supreme disgust, why he even sees graft seeking place 
as a business as legitimate as any other pursuit ; why 
it is that occasionally one meets with an individual 
openly confessing his desire to find for himself a place 
for the purpose of grafting. 

How, then, can we expect any rapid reform ; what can 
we look for in the way of family life, when and where 
there is strewn among us so large a percentage of these, 



THERE IS PLENTY FOR ALL 29 

— some of them degenerate and others unevolved human 
beings ? 

What can be expected of business, of social, religious, 
moral and political life, when the ideals of men and 
women, as an average, stand on so low a moral plane ? 

It follows naturally, as a product of such an outlook 
on life, that, unless it happens by a mere accident, 
nothing but a demagogue can be selected by popular 
vote to hold a political place. 

The ideals of a man, wise enough to be a statesman, 
are of too high an order for the adoption of the man 
having but an average understanding. In order to be 
selected for an important place of public trust, the 
candidate must be considerable of a demagogue, — must 
be or pretend to be one of the foolish average, in his 
politics, in economics and in religion. 

The water of a river can not rise above its source, nor 
can the social, the moral, the political, the family and 
the religious life of a people rise above that ideal which 
they feel, — the product of their average intelligence. 

These problems of ours, such as Divorce, Race- 
suicide, the White Slave Traffic, Sickness, Poverty and 
Crime, are effects — effects that have a common cause; 
they are all due to a lack of obtainable information ; be- 
hind which, as a cause one step more deeply hidden, we 
discover laziness. 

The solution of all these problems can be effected in 
but one way ; it is in that information, enlightenment, 
education, knowledge, which is possessed in common that 
the solution must be found. The key to co-operative 



30 HUMAN HARMONIES 

action among men and women is that information on 
which they can agree to act; it is the common consent 
that gives power to community action. It is that which 
all hold to be true that creates a common feeling, — 
sympathy, and makes the difference between civil life 
and savage life. It is this power of united action, 
through their knowledge and their feelings, that Nature 
is driving men to cultivate. 

This, however, takes a long time — is a slow process ; 
we fail to co-operate with Nature for the reason that 
we are blind, familiarity often conceals from us the 
deeper nature of men and the larger meaning of facts. 
For instance, to more fully illustrate, take the fact of 
ground rent: The name by which ground rent is com- 
monly known (" unearned increment ") indicates that 
the way of earning is deeply hidden from the majority 
of men; so, too, is the purpose (for which Nature in- 
tends that it shall some time be used) hidden, as is 
shown by the fact that it is allowed to pass into private 
pockets. 

But both the way of its earning and its evidently in- 
tended use are concealed by their plainness, their ob- 
viousness, their familiarity, emphasized by the custom- 
ary use made of ground rents. 

Ground rent is like most great things that are con- 
cealed in their everyday simplicity, and that it takes 
a long time to discover and put to their higher use. So 
we allow this tremendous fund of ground rent to pass 
into private pockets, where it is used for all sorts of 
corruptive, preventive and dissipative purposes. 



THERE IS PLENTY FOR ALL SI 

It is ground rent that should supply the means to 
carry on this educational campaign. This perverted 
use of ground rent breeds (by its temptations to those 
who are allowed to appropriate its use and by the in- 
justice that this same thing forces on others) ignorance, 
monopoly, idleness and poverty, injustice and crime' 
everywhere ; it furnishes the means to misinform through 
the daily press, and in this way to keep the majority 
continuously in darkness. 

Wisdom does not consist of knowing just enough to 
take advantage of others ; it is wisdom to know enough 
to not take advantage of others. 

This lying to the masses about their resources, and 
this tying up of their opportunities, has a penalty at- 
tached, such as none of these ignorant men engaged 
in the practice are able to realize. 



CHAPTER V 

The Penalty of Dishonesty and Waste 

EVERY person comes into this life with a heritage, 
from his ancestors, — a heritage of savagery 
coiled up in his feelings, — he likes play, but he 
hates work; he plays naturally, but he must be taught 
to work, be compelled to cultivate constructive con- 
tinuity. No person is in sympathy with the civilization 
into which he is born ; naturally, he is lazy, and rebels 
against social restraints. 

This condition of mind and of body must be dis- 
ciplined out by work. The person not taught as a child 
to work is seldom a good citizen ; leaders among men 
and women are those who have been taught to work 
while young, — they are as a rule farm boys and girls. 

A comparatively small percentage of the children of 
wealthy parents ever prove to be of much value to 
either themselves or to the world ; they are unapprecia- 
tive, prodigal spenders, too difficult to please, and as a 
rule, either with or without means, are found plotting 
against the interests of the majority, trying to get some- 
thing for nothing. 

In every city there can be found thousands of these 
human leeches living off the labor of others ; leeches who, 
in their conduct, can put Rudyard Kipling's Female 



DISHONESTY AND WASTE 33 

Vampire to shame. The lazy person is always trying 
to get something for nothing ; the criminal is accounted 
for, almost entirely, by laziness and ignorance ; he either 
knows nothing useful to do or does not care to do any- 
thing useful. 

Nature has a plan to compel human beings to use 
all of her gifts. Undirected or wasting energy is al- 
ways, as it should be, dangerous in its efforts to make 
its existence known to man and to show him the neces- 
sity for and the advantage of using it constructively. 

In the same way human energy can not with impunity 
be stored and held back from constructive use ; Nature 
has a plan to make this, also, expend itself, either con- 
structively or destructively. 

To understand this persistence of all energy, and of 
human energy in particular, is to see the cause of 
strikes, of riots, of domestic inharmony and of revolu- 
tions. 

All of our present disturbance comes from human 
energy held back and turned aside from its legitimate 
channels of activity, prevented by a lack of knowledge, 
by the dams of monopoly, from acting constructively. 

Where human beings are prevented by their ignorance 
from making for themselves the appliances of civilized 
life, they are barbarians, and where they are shut out 
from making and obtaining these things by having their 
natural opportunities monopolized by a few among 
them, there is working an injustice of deprivation that 
breeds discontent, ignorance and crime. The increase 
of ambition among men is in proportion to the increase 



34 HUMAN HARMONIES 

of intelligence, men are fighting slaves in proportion to 
their ignorance, they can not be entirely enslaved be- 
cause they can not be kept in entire ignorance. 

Mental and physical energy must continue to gen- 
erate among men in proportion to their intelligence ; so 
that, unless this energy is set, or allowed to set itself 
productively at work it accumulates very rapidly into a 
surplus that soon grows to be very difficult to hold 
and to control. 

In spite, therefore, of the efforts made with police, 
with armies, with prisons and with executions to hold 
and regulate the flow of this energy ; in spite of the well- 
meaning but degrading efforts of the charitably in- 
clined; in spite of asylums and hospitals of refuge for 
the products of injustice we find this surplus accumula- 
tion of unused energy showing itself in ways of ever 
increasing uncomfortableness and bursting forth with 
a violence that is proportioned to the pressure used to 
hold it. 

Nor do we ever find it possible to cure social disease 
by prohibitions and attempts to secure justice with 
law. Because lawyers, juries and judges are, with rare 
exceptions, the puppet products of their immoral sur- 
roundings ; if their system is corrupt and foolish we 
find courts to be the same ; not only do we find that 
not more than one in fifty ever transcends the moral 
average in conduct, but the majority fall below the 
average line of morality. A knowledge of law tends 
to demoralize by tempting men to obtain something for 
nothing through some form of graft. 



DISHONESTY AND WASTE 35 

In all cases where human energy is held back by an 
unjust system of restrictions from finding a legitimate 
productive outlet for itself, its accumulation and its 
pressure for expression to increase, its last phase is to 
burst forth in revolution, as it always has done, and 
as it is now doing in Mexico. It is through the social 
injustices born of ignorance that all the past civiliza- 
tions of the earth have been extinguished. 

Universal education and great injustice can not long 
remain together. That which has enabled France to 
pass successfully through and recover from her revolu- 
tions has been her high degree of general intelligence 
when compared with the extinguished civilizations of 
old. The higher the degree of a nation's intelligence 
the sooner will the correction of political and social 
abuses be undertaken, and the less will be the shock of 
reform. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Panorama of Race Unfoldment 

THE majority of men and women play and loaf 
away the time that should be used to obtain a 
broader view of life. 

Life, like a landscape that has been seen from many 
viewpoints, conveys to us a meaning large in pro- 
portion to the number of aspects in which it has been 
seen. Nearly all human beings look out upon life from 
a single viewpoint, or, at most, from few viewpoints. 
Individual knowledge is, as a rule, monographic, spe- 
cific, a landscape seen through a keyhole, or a crack in 
a wall ; it is narrow, pointed, the view of minds inclosed 
by the walls of a mental canyon or confined to the out- 
look from a dimly lighted basement. 

Most of us, because we live and walk on but one side 
of the street, never see the other side of that " old 
shield," which it is our duty to see by crossing the 
street and looking back. We are not yet sufficiently 
freed from our fears and prejudices to do this. So 
we see life from no more than a single viewpoint as an 
Individualist, a Socialist, an Idealist, or a Realist, a 
Conservatist or a Liberalist, a Spiritualist or a Materi- 
alist; when the fact of the matter is, we should be 
all of these to the extent of the truth, which we, by an 



RACE UNFOLDMENT S7\ 

unbiased investigation, migh. see that they contain. All 
these directly opposed views are the two poles of knowl- 
edge ; we meet with these seeming contradictions, these 
paradoxes everywhere ; it is the motor duality of Nature, 
the two reconcilable aspects of one great truth. The 
evident meaning of all this is to stimulate us to action 
by pique, by puzzle, by flagellation and by hope; to 
examine both sides of the shield. 

The broader the landscape of our consciousness, the 
greater the variety we hold in mind for comparison, the 
more nearly correct must be the estimates which we are 
able to place upon the specific items of life. 

This is why all of us stand so much in need of that 
enlarged mental outlook which a broad general knowl- 
edge alone can give. 

Every person should understand evolution. Evolu- 
tion is the key to relationships, to the interpretation 
of the inter-dependencies of all life and the products of 
life. The special pleader, who believes in his plea, can 
not possibly be a man of very large parts, and if he 
does not believe in his plea he is smaller still, to the 
extent that he is false. 

Specific items of knowledge can be correctly in- 
terpreted by any given individual, to the extent of his 
general knowledge. A thing seen standing alone is seen 
but dimly, it is the view of all selfishness. 

The specialist is a better practitioner to the extent of 
his general information. Every profession, every oc- 
cupation, and every business grows large and successful 
to the extent that it becomes cosmopolitan, to the extent 



38 HUMAN HARMONIES 

of the contiguous or closely related, the correlative 
knowledge acquired, by its builder and that few ever do 
acquire. There is no item of information, even the re- 
mote item, that does not in some way help to illumine 
all other items of information. 

So it follows that a man of very ordinary caliber be- 
comes, with a liberal education, a man of considerable 
importance in his community, whereas, without such 
help, he would amount to but very little in the world. 
(Of course, the man born with but mediocre abil- 
ity can not, with education, be transformed into a 
genius.) 

In all forms of life, internal states of consciousness 
are expressed in external appearances. The individual 
is able to read these appearances in proportion to the 
degree of the unfoldment of his consciousness. 

This reading is what science undertakes ; research 
consists of starting with some given effect, or effects, 
and thence feeling the way back nearer to the first cause. 
In this way men learn to read features, to interpret 
the historical meaning of that which they find expressed 
in all external forms, in the stars, and the planets, in 
the landscape, the plants, the animals, and in the 
human trunk, head, face and hands ; these all tell a 
story, give a history of the part the soul of the form 
has played in its upward growth through ages, and that 
no one has more than begun to read. 

In order to better understand this specific part of 
life, " The Making of Human Affinities and Harmonies," 
it seems best to here briefly outline a broader and deeper 



RACE UNFOLDMENT 39 

view of the way of all race unfoldment, that we may 
see how this human panorama moves onward and up- 
ward, from a worse condition to a better condition, by 
means of that slow process we call evolution; to briefly 
trace the historical pathway and take note of the generic 
action of the law of progress. 

Civilization, as we find it to-day, is very largely an 
involuntary product ; the bulk of what we know we have 
been driven to learn by experience. 

The voluntary pursuit of information, scientific re- 
search, is a thing of comparatively recent date. So 
also do we find it with education; voluntary improve- 
ment, culture. So far does this hold true that even now 
the bulk of the race learns nearly as much by its foolish 
and disastrous experiences as by the shorter and easier 
way of voluntary effort in the direction of self-better- 
ment. 

During this long period of past involuntary growth, 
friendly relations have sprung up between nations and 
among individuals by means of fighting. They were 
obliged to fight in order to learn that the same results 
could be secured without fighting, in a much easier way. 
It was also in this way that they became acquainted and 
learned, through this power of might which they en- 
countered, to understand and respect each other. It 
was by these common experiences that they were also 
driven to exchange ideas, and were drawn into friendly 
relations. This was and is the way of the evolution of 
many sorts of loves. 

Nor are we yet through with this old order of human 



40 HUMAN HARMONIES 

evolution through foolishness ; the spell still hangs over 
us. 

Individuals and nations reared to-day in the experi- 
ences and education of different environments, dislike 
each other. There exists between human beings a mu- 
tual hatred to the extent of their differences, — they find 
it difficult to arrive at mutual understanding without a 
fight ; the fight gives them a co-experience, it cultivates 
a bond of friendship through the respect of each for the 
other's prowess. 

We see that this inharmony is very much intensified 
by a difference in language and in color of the skin. 

It is seen to be particularly difficult for a person of 
small caliber and meager information, the ignorant per- 
son, to understand that another differing from him- 
self in color and in language can even be an intelligent 
person or that he is not defective in sense,^ — hard of 
hearing. 

However, these national differences, due to the differ- 
ences existing in the environment of each, are evidently 
not set up accidentally; as instruments for unfolding 
human life, they perform a very great function. 

But since each instrument instituted by Nature for 
this purpose, serves only its turn, giving way to a later 
evolved, we may suspect that this one of war, too, will 
in time cease to be needed. Even now, war seems to 
be rapidly approaching the end of its term of service. 
We are rapidly learning the better way of understand- 
ing each other by means of voluntary enlightenment. 

Travel is a thing of recent date, human beings have 



RACE UNFOLDMENT 41 

but begun to move over the face of the globe, to mix, to 
get acquainted and to amalgamate by contact and by 
education, to become one homogeneous race, to make a 
world nation that is sure to be. 

But this world nation, though in rapid process of 
formation, is for the future. We are still filled with 
bigotry and hatred because we are yet very ignorant, 
having just began to exchange ideas with our next-door 
neighbors. Though we are rapidly improving, we have 
a long distance yet to go; Seattle still lies concerning 
Tacoma, and Tacoma does the same thing concerning 
Seattle. So we find the same thing to hold true of St. 
Paul and Minneapolis, of the Irish and English, every 
neighborhood has its little gossip and religious fights. 
Though we have discarded our skin garments we are 
not yet far enough from the woods to throw off our 
ancient tribal feelings. Therefore, we find ourselves 
clannish rather than large and cosmopolitan. We are 
not yet wise enough to be tolerant of other nations or 
of the individuals among ourselves who differ from us in 
opinions and manners. There is yet remaining much of 
the barbarous in education, much even in business, in 
science and in the professions ; in particular is there 
much to be found in politics, in journalism and in nearly 
all religions. Individuals and nations differ little in 
their ideas when compared with the wide difference found 
in their forms of expression. 

It is this difference in their forms of expression used 
by individuals and nations, of manners, of words, of 
customs, opinions, language, color, religion, politics, 



42 HUMAN HARMONIES 

and in their dogmatic adherence to all these forms 
without examination, coupled with a blind greed, that 
makes human beings fight. And this fighting way to 
knowledge is good until such time as they discover the 
better way, till they see and feel that all matters fought 
over could be much better and more easily settled with- 
out the fight. By an examination of their forms of 
expression men will finally learn that the only use of 
fighting is a spur to action and to show at its finish 
what a foolish and expensive process it was to secure 
that which might have been obtained with little effort. 
About the only cure, however, for the bulk of the 
foolishness of life is for each individual to do the foolish 
thing and as a consequence suffer enough to make him 
remember the lesson. It seems necessary for the ma- 
jority to go through these same fights again and again, 
before they are able to see the foolishness of the thing 
with sufficient clearness to stop it. The man who, in 
any community, is enough of a back number to seek 
revenge, is a man who should be taken in hand by the 
community ; he is a dangerous person. There is a bet- 
ter way; it is all a matter of knowledge and of self- 
control. It must be that individuals of all colors, na- 
tions, tribes and races are here on this earth for a pur- 
pose. It must be that one has just as legitimate a 
right to existence as has another. We have as yet no 
evidence to the contrary. There is room for all to act 
their part, plenty of room and opportunity for all to 
earn a place to sleep comfortably, plenty to eat and 
more to enjoy than we have ever yet dreamed of. 



RACE UNFOLDMENT 43 

This can not be realized immediately, however ; men 
and women can not be trusted, they are too dishonest. 
So, to repeat, we must, for some time yet, steal and lie, 
and cheat, and grab, and kill, and imprison, and go to 
war, merely to learn that there is more of everything 
in the world than the human family can use. The 
world is made up of jealous, quarrelsome nations, and 
each nation is composed of hostile individuals and or- 
ganizations, all of which seem to be afraid that they 
will starve to death unless they waste at least half they 
produce in fighting each other, when not one-half the 
soil of the earth is at present under cultivation, to say 
nothing of the other unused opportunities. 

Whenever we think we need to fight we can find some- 
one to oppose us, and if we need money for the purpose, 
we can find that, and someone to urge us on with en- 
couraging flattery if we can furnish the security. And, 
so long as we know no better than to be thus coerced by 
our bad tempers, our egotism, our greed and our dis- 
honesty, we should pay the bills cheerfully. 



CHAPTER VII 

From War to Peace 

OF course, a complete change from a militant state 
of society to one of peace, or a change in the 
individual from a peevish, revengeful, righting 
attitude of mind to one of peaceful co-operation, means 
simply a change from a destructive expenditure of a 
large part of social and individual energy to a con- 
structive use. This means intelligent construction and 
reconstruction in everything. 

In all cases where it becomes necessary to demolish 
an old structure in order to build something new and 
better, from a city block on up through all social forms, 
to the rebuilding of the human body and the settle- 
ment of national differences, this demolition and re- 
construction will be carried on simultaneously. It will 
be undertaken and carried forward without fuss or tur- 
moil, without violent destruction, wreckage or icono- 
clastic methods. Nature builds all of her higher forms 
by a silent process, by a simultaneous destruction and 
construction. This noiseless move forward, by using 
the material in the building of a new structure as fast 
as it crumbles from the old, we are slowly copying from 
Nature. But for a long time yet we must struggle with 
this handicap of conservatism and break up the old 
44 



FROM WAR TO PEACE 45 

forms with noise and violence ; the methods must be con- 
siderably iconoclastic, revolutionary, foolish. 

We slowly learn the art of noiseless reconstruction in 
everything, through the noisy, painful, warfare methods 
of first breaking up our old and useless forms and 
building new and better structures on our battlefields. 

It is all a matter of unfoldment. Men and women 
quarrel less in proportion to the degree of the opening 
consciousness. Historically speaking, the human en- 
ergy of the world was at first expended aimlessly and 
a large part of the time fruitlessly, except to the ex- 
tent that destruction bore the fruit of knowledge. 
Through the ages the race has learned the art of using 
its energy ever more constructively. 

This better use of force and matter, as a means of 
human unfoldment, is the one great lesson that it seems 
Nature is trying to teach, she having so placed the de- 
termination to teach this lesson in her great law of com- 
pulsion, above all other considerations, as to make it 
impossible for any person to hang back with impunity ; 
the longer he refuses to learn, the more will he suffer. 

This law to teach human beings to act with ever- 
increasing thoughtfulness, more constructively and har- 
moniously, is inexorable in its working. 

Can this tremendous struggle of to-day have any 
other meaning than the one of Nature's urge onward to 
a larger life? 

Must not the intent of Nature be, to awaken each 
individual to a knowledge of her purpose, to show to 
each that her purpose is a beneficent one ; that he may, 



46 HUMAN HARMONIES 

in time, learn to co-operate with her law to the end of 
a more rapid fulfillment? 

Is it not because we have not learned in any true 
sense the purpose of life, and to co-operate with this 
purpose, that we suffer? 

Is it not because we are still experience-driven rebels, 
that we find ourselves very uncomfortable? Is not this 
why we are, when compared with that which we can 
easily see we should be, of so little use to either our- 
selves or to others? Does not this explain why it is that 
we often pause in this struggle of life to inquire of our- 
selves, " Is life, after all, worth the trouble of being 
born and of living? " 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Reflex Action of Human Structures 

THE social structure of every community is, as 
has been briefly shown, a reflection of the average 
intelligence of its units. But this human struc- 
ture we call the community reacts in its influence upon 
the units of which it is composed. 

All human creations, of either the hand or the brain, 
effect reflexively their creators. But so, also, do we 
find it with objects of Nature. The Moon was once a 
part of this Earth, upon which it now in its separate 
existence exerts a reflex influence. 

We criticise our present social system for the reason 
that by its reflex action it denies us the use of so many 
of our natural rights, compels us to do so many foolish 
things, suffer so much, and use so much time for so 
little learning. We assert that it is a very stupid 
structure, contains so much injustice that it needs to 
be rebuilded. 

The home depends to a very large extent upon its 
physical, social, mental and economic environments. 
And so much does it depend, through the man-made 
wrongs of these environments, that the family harmony 
and happiness are frequently destroyed in cases where 
47 



48 HUMAN HARMONIES 

the closest natural or affinity ties, between the two, ex- 
isted at the start. 

The remedy for economic and social wrongs lies in the 
rebuilding of these structures by means of raising the 
grade of the community intelligence; there is no other 
remedy. 

The cure we have stored in our laboratories and in 
our books, waiting for sufficient recognition, — waiting 
to find its way to practical operation in the brains and 
the hands of men and women ; we must learn to use our 
heritage of unapplied knowledge. 

If the majority were equipped with what could easily 
be taught them, or with what they might learn without 
any assistance, of the elementary sciences alone, in prac- 
tice this would be a very different world. A knowledge 
of no more than the elements of the sciences assists the 
understanding of the individual very greatly in his 
reading; with this he can obtain very much more for 
the time he spends in reading, even the magazines and 
fiction. And these two mediums of general and prac- 
tical knowledge, though far from ideal, give much more 
that is of value, except in the formation of an archaic 
literary style, than either Lubbock's hundred best books 
or Eliot's five-foot book shelf. For the use of the major- 
ity these two groups of selections have, on the whole, 
little value ; they were made by academically trained 
men very largely out of touch with popular needs. 

We do not here recommend for the average person 
fossil books, antique books, technical books, exhaustive 
books, nor guess books. 



REFLEX ACTION 49 

The schools are doing an excellent work and they are 
slowly improving, but there is a great educational need 
existing that has not yet been met. The less intelli- 
gent are in the majority; these should be reached, in- 
terested and awakened by the intelligent minority, be- 
cause few have arrived at that place in their unf oldment 
where they can start and continue their own improve- 
ment. Educators have not yet seen the full importance 
of arousing the family life ; the foundation of the child's 
education should be laid before its tenth year, but 
parents know nothing of how this may be accomplished. 
Parental ignorance and indifference could be largely 
overcome with suggestive information. 

The first step taken, then, to secure this end, should 
be the supplying of, at popular prices, popularly 
written or easily understood and instructive books that 
will stir and arouse. The next step taken should be 
one to awaken interest, to overcome indifference, to 
stimulate activity. This could, perhaps, be best ac- 
complished with a deluge of stirring popular lectures ; 
by covering the country with these lectures again and 
again. The government could do no better work than 
to send out an army of trained lecturers for this pur- 
pose, and this alone. 

The fact of the matter is that the education of the 
young is largely turned over to the sports ; children are 
allowed to take the easy road to good-for-nothingness 
and dishonesty. 

To the average unevolved mind the subject-matter of 
our educational books seems dull, and few professional 



50 HUMAN HARMONIES 

men, even, learn more than a fraction of the profound, 
exhaustive, stupid matter of the text-books they wade 
through to reach its practice. 

This appeal is to the intelligent, not to the man who 
begins at once to argue as to the matter of what edu- 
cation is; the meaning of the word education here used 
is, in the broad sense of enlightenment, all awakened con- 
sciousness, whether accomplished in the school-room, the 
shop, the field, the forest or elsewhere. 

Men and women can not very well co-operate till 
they are equipped with the common knowledge that gives 
them mutual understanding and enables them to act 
justly toward each other. Without knowledge, the con- 
duct of men is nearly as often unjust as just ; the good, 
or moral motives of man are determined by their wis- 
dom, their bad ones by their ignorance — men can not 
very well co-operate till they can trust each other. 

The power to first discriminate, then to generalize and 
classify, the power to grasp abstractions, is the fruit 
of wisdom ; one can not be magnanimous, he can not be 
tolerant, till he learns how ; he can not be truthful and 
honest till he knows enough to see that it does not pay, 
in the largest sense, to be anything else. 

The majority are not yet sufficiently enlightened for 
successful social co-operation, and for this reason about 
half the disagreeable happenings in the family life (be- 
tween the man and the woman) are due to causes that 
lie beyond the control of both; annoyances and disas- 
ters for which neither should blame the other as they 
often do. The causes here are economic, and much too 



REFLEX ACTION 51 

deeply hidden to be seen by the badly informed average 
person. 

Knowledge of the causes of social wrongs, however, 
would enable them to avoid much of the bad effect of 
institutions on their lives. To know the cause is a duty 
that each person owes to himself and to society. There 
is a narrow sphere within which the individual will 
seems to operate with more or less freedom of control, 
so that the well-informed person can, by a wise manipu- 
lation within this sphere, anticipate and avoid much of 
the bad effects of dishonest individuals and the unjust 
workings of social institutions. 

This upward human climb is achieved through a gain 
of knowledge ; it is due to the opening vista of conscious- 
ness and can be hastened by voluntary effort. Nature 
seems to be saying to us all, " Come on, I have some- 
thing much better for you than you now have, but you 
are not yet prepared to receive it. I have many things 
to give you, but I have made them conditional ; for your 
sake, not mine, I have so made the law that you must 
earn your possessions ; it is the earning that gives you 
appreciation, and appreciation that enables you to 
enjoy your possessions ; the earning gives you the ex- 
perience that cultivates in you the necessary feeling. 

" So you can, if you will, pitch in and climb fast ; or 
you can hang back and growl and loaf and suffer ; it is 
' up to you.' " 

Hence, the importance that there is attached to the 
gaining of knowledge, of education in its broadest 
meaning. 



52 HUMAN HARMONIES 

To understand how we are, as individuals, coerced by 
our institutions and how demagogues are interested in 
keeping us coerced, is an exceedingly important part of 
the education of every person. 

So that one of the prime essentials of the education 
of every child lies not so much in that part which will 
enable him to gain a subsistence, important as this now 
is, as in his awakening. The most important function 
of the teacher or of the parent is to arouse in the child 
a knowledge hunger; if this can be accomplished his 
knowledge of economics will care for itself, and his 
other education, outside of the elements, will also, in 
most cases, do the same after he leaves the school. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Educational Handicap of Monopoly and of 
Dogma 

EVERY child comes into this world with certain 
proclivities, certain mental and physical pecul- 
iarities, a predisposition to act in certain ways 
that some attribute to a gift direct to the individual, a 
divine bestowal ; others to a heritage of accumulated an- 
cestral or race experiences, — to heredity; while it is 
regarded by a third class as the stored-up product of 
the individual's own past experiences in other embodi- 
ments ; they contend that he has lived many times before. 
Whether this latter be true or not, correct in theory, 
or a matter of fact, it seems to be more in harmony 
with what we understand of natural law, a logical con- 
tinuation of the work of evolution that gives justice to 
the individual. This postulates some freedom of will 
and places the responsibility more on the individual 
himself; it makes him less of a puppet, extends to him 
the privilege of self-culture, of holding and enjoying 
the fruits of his own efforts ; it leaves continuously open 
to him the opportunity to correct his mistakes and go 
on up into a higher life. It is this that better accounts 
for all initial human tendencies, proclivities, and par- 
ticularly well does it account for human prodigies. 
53 



54 , HUMAN HARMONIES 

With most persons, at least, the purpose of life, that 
for which we are here, the way by which we have ar- 
rived, — our source of being — destination, what becomes 
of us when this state is ended, is merely a guess or in- 
ference drawn from appearances. 

For the purpose of our present discussion, however, 
it matters very little which theory is right and which 
wrong. Though there are many different attempts to 
explain why it is so, we do know that all children come 
into this world wholly unfitted to play their part as 
citizens; they would not be less prepared to meet the 
requirements of the social surroundings into which 
they are born were they to arrive fresh from some 
primitive age of the world. 

And the proclivities with which they are equipped 
when they arrive, and which we attribute to heredity, 
make them appear to be exotics, or prodigals, returning 
once again to catch up, by the rapid process of educa- 
tion, with their race — but it keeps us all guessing and 
some very foolish guesses find their way into good 
standing — become orthodox. 

Anyhow, when children arrive they are found needing 
a very great deal of attention, more than every person 
(either as a parent or as a teacher) cares to undertake, 
to prepare them to so meet the requirements of their 
environment as to be a help rather than a burden to 
themselves and to others. 

This training of the child, this displacing of his unfit 
with the fit, this exchange of his involuntary or animal 
naturalness for a later, a higher, a voluntary or human 



EDUCATIONAL HANDICAP 55 

naturalness, is what education undertakes but has not 
yet learned very well how to perform ; it still leaves him 
badly educated, and, as a man, very much of a barbarian 
in his practices. 

Progressive change seems to have been too rapid for 
our educational assimilation; at least seventy-five per 
cent of the world's population does not receive from 
education what this stage of human progress owes it ; 
and, for two very plain reasons : the first and greatest 
enemy that education has to contend with is monopoly ; 
our schools are robbed of their natural funds for sup- 
port by a selfish conservatism, — the greed of special 
privilege. Dogma and monopoly are united by the 
common interest of greed. Against this tremendous 
injustice the friends of individual and general improve- 
ment, a comparatively few individuals in private life, 
are, by means of a slow propaganda, " putting up " a 
continuous, determined fight, that in the end will win. 
But, in the meantime, the work is a slow one and re- 
quires much sacrifice on the part of the less selfish, who, 
with their slender means, keep alive in the new and the 
progressive the better part of human education ; and it 
is this also that keeps the schools from sinking into edu- 
cational atrophy. 

Conventional education, — authority-controlled in- 
struction, — is slow to improve; it holds to its old and 
crude forms, its errors and superstitions too tena- 
ciously. 

This dogma, entangled with the matter of education, 
and brought along down from past ages in the preju- 



56 HUMAN HARMONIES 

dices of men, is the handicap or enemy (standing next to 
monopoly) with which educational, as well as all other 
progress, has to contend. Nor is this handicap a small 
one ; it is simply tremendous because these medieval 
devotees have cultivated, with a determined purpose in 
view, a very subtle art of impressing the plastic mind 
of the helpless child with their special brand of mental 
fixture. And by reaching a very large number, they 
still hold, to quite an extent, a boycott threat against 
all freedom of speech, of writing, of thought and of 
conduct. These educators, or rather, progress-fighters, 
know precisely what they want and how to obtain it ; 
they also have the means, but they do not know their 
real needs, nor of the further fact, that they are their 
own greatest, and among the world's greatest enemies, 
because he who, having the power, would restrict in any 
form that freedom of life and of action which interferes 
in no way with the rights of others is an enemy to all 
his kind. Dogma and special privilege are enemies of 
progress, — they restrict, deny the freedom to change. 

If the founders of this Republic were right in their 
belief that the safety of democratic institutions depends 
on general intelligence (and we know that it does), then 
it follows that any system of monopoly that diverts the 
natural funds of educational support into private 
pockets is far worse than a lack of patriotism ; it is even 
a criminal wrong. The beneficiaries of every monopoly 
on earth, whether public or private, tend to become 
opinionated, dogmatic, obtrusive and coercive, and 
hereby a non-progressive stumbling-block among men — 



EDUCATIONAL HANDICAP 57 

a public danger. They soon forget that the source of 
their power resides in the individuals by whom they 
are surrounded. They, therefore, usurp and trample 
on private rights to the exact extent that their privilege 
removes them from the correction of competition. This 
is the tendency of all monopolies ; private corporations, 
judges, railroads and governments all abuse their power 
and are tyrants over individuals to the extent of the 
power that the removal of competition gives them. 
Men are yet far too small to be trusted with much 
power over their fellows. If what the Socialist wants 
could be set in operation, the individual would very soon 
become an absolute slave to a fixed system. 

Our public schools need the correcting competitive 
spur of private educational institutions to keep them 
awake and improving. The observing person can read- 
ily see that they are, even now, non-progressive to the 
extent that they are not obliged to compete. The 
officials and employees of railroads, cities, states and 
nation soon come to act as though they were the owners 
of these institutions because they soon come to feel this 
way. The judge on the bench, being considerably re- 
moved from competitive correction, often wields his dele- 
gated power as though it were his own, even though few 
could be found with minds sufficiently simple and childish 
to announce their belief. 

So far, the world has not suffered enough from the 
restrictions of monopolies and dogmas to enable it to 
appreciate freedom. The world is not yet old enough 
to have any high degree of freedom; we do not know 



58 HUMAN HARMONIES 

what competition would do for us because competition 
has never had a chance to work — we have never had 
freedom and do not yet know enough to have freedom ; 
we have always been monopoly-ridden and robbed. 

The best educational success can not be secured with- 
out freedom to compete. Men and women need awak- 
ening, but they should be left free to reason; without 
this, intelligence is impossible. 

Referring again to dogma, it, too, is merely a product 
and a tool of monopoly that, in its turn, becomes re- 
flexive^ a monopolistic tyrant of the mind, shutting 
out reason. 

It follows that the teachers of any dogma (whether 
educational, economic, financial, social or religious) 
who suppress reason are unpatriotic ; they are enemies 
of their kind to the extent that their dogmatic teach- 
ing benumbs the brain and retards mental action — we 
can progress only to the extent that the human mind is 
freed from its trammels — freedom means progress, and 
progress means more freedom. 

But we are confronted with facts ; the monopolist 
and the dogmatist are with us in large numbers, and the 
progressive world must put up one continuous struggle 
for human freedom and justice, against these enemies 
of a bettering change, who are strongly intrenched with 
their selfish interest as a bulwark against nearly all 
progress. 

This is a mistake ; there is a law that compels all life 
to move onward through a change of form; hence, all 
forms are mutable. 



EDUCATIONAL HANDICAP 59 

Human beings, as a part of this life, are subjected to 
this same law ; there is a penalty attached to standing 
still ; our refusal to change our forms of expression from 
lower types to higher ones brings trouble. 

Hence, it follows, that there is much greater danger 
from selfish and ignorant opposition to change than 
from the mistakes of changes made in ignorance. 

Where the conventional forms of conservatism hap- 
pen to be sufficiently strong to prevent the natural flow 
of energy from making for itself new forms of expres- 
sion, it means decay, atrophy and death. This holds 
true of both individuals and of nations. Where old 
forms hold back for a time, but are not nearly strong 
enough to strangle to death the life that is struggling 
for expression from within, we witness strikes, divisions 
of social groups and reform moves, as in our own coun- 
try. But where old forms are sufficiently strong to hold 
back for a much greater pressure, as in Mexico, the 
pent-up forces burst forth in revolutions. In Spain, 
conserving forms were strong enough to produce 
national paralysis. But as a rule, this continuous re- 
birth, set up in Nature, can not be long suppressed ; in 
all countries, even the most civilized, it is continuously 
breaking away and expressing itself in some violent 
form, as in crime and destruction — it is the revolt 
against the pressure of dogma. 

This shackling effect of dogmatic instruction can be 
very plainly seen in the products of our schools: the 
common school, the high school, the college and the 
university, and in a particular way does this hold 



60 HUMAN HARMONIES 

true of the parochial school — yet we call ourselves 
civilized. 

This partly explains why educators fall so far 
short of our ideals in some features of their prod- 
ucts. 

Dogma of instruction tends to deliver its students to 
the world sealed with bigotry and opposed to all that is 
new, — intolerant of all that they do not find sanctioned 
by their authorities, in favor of whom they have been 
prejudiced by their teachers. 

Our college- and university-taught men and women 
should be the pioneers of the race ; the mental, the social, 
the economic and the religious liberators of their kind, — 
the advance guard of progress. 

But they are far from being this, and for the reason 
that they have been badly prejudiced, warped and fixed 
by the dogmas of school instruction, enslaved by and 
made afraid to dispute their authorities — they absorb 
with too much credulity. In fact, a too great belief in 
that which we consider demonstrated knowledge tends 
to trammel the free action of the mind, to deaden its 
pioneering impetus, to fetter the power of the imagina- 
tion, to discourage its theory-building power, to kill 
ideals ; — it leads in the direction of academic pride, 
bigotry and intolerance. 

So, it is quite often that we meet with so-called lib- 
erally-educated men who are unable to view without con- 
siderable amusement (with one of their superior smiles, 
and occasionally with arrogance) all fields of original 
investigation that they can not find endorsed by their 



EDUCATIONAL HANDICAP 61 

authorities. They are vulnerable, enslaved, by their 
ruts of prejudice because their courage was crushed in 
the schools — they have been turned out with an illiberal, 
liberal education ; though they have secured the college 
or university degree, waded through the conventional 
curriculum, their prescription has been taken too cred- 
ulously, — they have simply absorbed both the real in- 
formation and the dogma ; in other words, they " have 
been through college." 

Of course, even with all its faults, what is known as 
a liberal education makes, as a rule, of the individual 
a better citizen than a person having only a common 
school education ; liberally-educated persons are more 
comfortable to others ; it is less often that they burden 
the community with the expense of crime. 

The aim here is to reach the truth — to criticise in a 
spirit of fairness ; institutional education has great 
value, but there is room for educational reform through 
a larger supply of educational means, better methods of 
instruction and the elimination of dogma. Almost 
every excellent thing could be better, — is susceptible of 
improvement. 

The school drill does not, by intimidation, destroy 
the independent power of thought that resides in the 
larger calibered students, — skeptical students, who 
carry in their minds sufficient doubt to counteract the 
evil influence of their lessons of dogma. The world is 
now passing through a dogma phase of evolution in edu- 
cation, as well as in everything else ; and in the passing, 
the rate of speed can be greatly accelerated by remov- 



62 HUMAN HARMONIES 

ing all this half-lie positiveness from the instruction of 
the pupil and the student. 

There is very little of that which is known, outside of 
mathematics, that should be impressed by the instructor 
upon the mind of the student with any very high degree 
of hypnotic intensity. And this for the reason that, 
though it has taken the human family ages to accumu- 
late by its experience, by its experiments, and by scien- 
tific research, that which it offers the student in the 
matter of his school education, it still holds true that 
this matter is an incomplete and imperfect human prod- 
uct; most of which is being subjected to slow but con- 
tinuous change. So that much of this which he is now 
taught in the schools may be for him but a temporary 
holding. 

On the other hand, what the student, as well as the 
people in general, need to be shown is, that this matter 
of education has a reasonable permanence through a 
slow process of improving change, fought out against 
the selfish element in conservatism. And that, notwith- 
standing the slowness of this improvement, in the mat- 
ter of education, its value to the world, imperfect as it 
is, no person is yet able to appreciate because it has not 
yet been half utilized. 

With right methods of educational awakening, most 
persons could be brought to see the importance of self- 
improvement. There are a few, however, who do not 
seem to have within them this possibility ; these are the 
human problems, — those who seem to lack the brains, a 
fact that is explained with a very fair amount of satis- 



EDUCATIONAL HANDICAP 63 

faction by the misfortune of birth. There is, however, 
a slow decrease in the number of such births through 
better and an increasing amount of Eugenic instruction. 
This will, in its turn, increase the percentage of self- 
made men and women, — those endowed with the self- 
awakening power of courage, initiative, stamina, deter- 
mination, continuity, outlook, insight and good health. 
All this, however, is impossible without one thing more; 
and this one thing is : the belief, the feeling, that all this 
will pay, the faith that Nature has given to us the auto- 
matic power to conserve and to hold the product of all 
our self-building efforts and carry this product for- 
ward and upward into successive lives. This " one life 
belief " this unawakened, faithless and hopeless con- 
dition of mind, that produces so much of this " what's 
the use " feeling in the world, accounts for much of 
this limp and spineless condition among the majority of 
men as well as for their greedy ambition and dishonesty : 
this belief that they must squeeze the last drop of sense- 
pleasure from life at all hazards, because that is all. 



CHAPTER X 

The Value of Our Compulsions 

IT is the gaining of things by effort that makes them 
worth having, — the association of the struggle with 
the thing gained, that gives appreciation, and the 
lack of this work-earned feeling that accounts for waste- 
fulness. 

The reader may know that knowledge gained by effort 
is character, that neither the strongest individuals nor 
the strongest nations grow up in a pampering environ- 
ment; that the happiest and the most successful men 
and women in the world are those who have been taught 
while young to work ; but if he can see this with sufficient 
clearness to put it into practice, he is one of the uncom- 
mon, an exception to the rule of men, who, in practice, 
try by almost every means to shirk their needed and 
wholesome lessons of life, instead of meeting them and 
conquering them at the opportune time. 

All life learns to do what is best for itself, willingly, 
by being for a long time driven and enticed to do what 
is best. 

Beginning with the cell life and ascending through 

the different grades of the lower animals, this one thing 

of " work and learn " has been made compulsory. All 

animal life is so constituted and so environed that, with- 

64 



VALUE OF OUR COMPULSIONS 65 

out effort, existence ceases. Lazy species become ex- 
tinct, and lazy individuals are always in trouble. In all 
life, work co-operatively performed attracts and holds 
together the co-operating unit by memory and feeling. 
All lower animals, and the great majority of human 
beings, are yet the mere puppets of this law of compul- 
sion and attraction. 

Most men and women are driven by hunger to earn 
their daily bread ; they like play, or aimless action, and 
they dislike work, or constructive action. So we find 
them, as a rule, doing only that which they are com- 
pelled to do to gain the specific ends of subsistence and 
of entertainment ; without ever suspecting that there 
must be in all this struggle a larger purpose, character- 
building, — that this is merely the evolution of the in- 
dividual towards a larger life beyond the human life. 

Nearly all children protest against education; they 
must be either enticed or driven into purposeful con- 
duct, the constructive discipline of their lives, at the 
beginning ; they like play and they dislike work ; they 
want baseball, card-playing, dancing; and even older 
persons are much the same, — they do not like their work. 

The majority want to stop work every few days 
and take a play, — a vacation; continuous constructive 
activity soon becomes irksome. 

This holds particularly true of the less evolved, the 
less fitted into civil life by education, by the molding 
power of work and of contact with culture; the lazy, 
shirking, prodigal element ; that keeps thinking, work- 
ing, thrifty people on the alert to head off their destruc- 



66 HUMAN HARMONIES 

tion, their dishonesty and their crimes ; and to meet the 
expenses incurred by all this foolishness. 

But Nature, evidently, has provided a way to drive 
all men and women to work, a way to make them finally 
like the action involved and to understand its meaning. 
This apparently explains why it is that we find the 
members of this less evolved class obliged to serve for 
their subsistence in the most arduous physical occupa- 
tions ; here they are driven to obtain precisely the dis- 
cipline that they need; but, of course, they always resent 
being told so, because they do not believe it to be true. 

So, to serve this compulsory purpose, we find many 
resources coiled up in the natural law. In the first 
place the human being gets hungry and cold; for the 
means to prevent this he must work. One other thing 
of great importance, for this purpose, is the matter of 
human mating; the subject now under particular con- 
sideration. 

We find the young man and the young woman urged 
by a tremendous impulse to marry, even before they 
have had time to obtain either educational fitness, or 
material means to marry. 

It is evident that here in this bondage the real com- 
pulsory struggle of life begins. First it is the mental 
adjustment between the man and the woman ; what a 
time they have with their differences ! Then comes the 
struggle with children, and for bread and butter and 
clothing, — against debts, sickness and doctors, lawyers 
and law-suits, poor crops and accidents ; the larger part 
of the trouble of which is due to foolishness. 



VALUE OF OUR COMPULSIONS 67 

In all of this there is, however, the best kind of edu- 
cational discipline for the average man and woman. 
And while all but a few will take no other than the one 
of compulsion, yet the majority of these, once they have 
become well ensnared and the novelty deadened, see in 
these compulsions little more than a very ugly species 
of slavery that they would gladly shirk if they could, 
and frequently we find them doing so. Most men, how- 
ever, are held to the performance of these, their duties, 
by the marriage tie, parental love and public sentiment; 
like a horse in a pasture, they are kept in their proper 
places by the conventional fence. 

This discipline is just what most men and women 
need. Nature herself has set up this educational trap 
of experience to carry them across the unconscious 
stage of their soul growth. She enlists them with sex 
attraction and holds them there with the marriage tie 
and public sentiment, whereas, were it not for this, they 
would shirk. However, she rewards them for being 
driven, in many ways, but in particular does she fur- 
nish them with their honeymoon experiences followed by 
parental love. 

Notwithstanding all this, we find many of these at 
the finish, wondering if this struggle has been worth 
while; particularly when their children are ungrateful 
and do not succeed. 

Such parents, in fact there are few others, fail to 
realize that the chief product of their life work is 
stored up in their own individualities, not in those of 
their children. 



68 HUMAN HARMONIES 

What is the meaning of all this? What speculation 
are we, with a fair amount of safety, warranted in 
making, concerning this matter of compulsory and 
voluntary action in which we can see the onward move 
but no satisfactory end; no conclusive product that 
warrants all this struggle? 

There is one thing in all Nature that is most emphat- 
ically evident and this one thing is : her determination 
to drive and to entice all her sentient forms to act 
ever more purposefully ; to acquire through practice 
the art of definite construction and awakened intel- 
ligence. 

This is the meaning of education; education is the 
purposeful transfer of information. If we but observe 
carefully, we will find that there is a rebuke set up in 
the great unfolding law of life for all desultory con- 
duct. It is, perhaps, never possible for any individual 
to do anything thoughtlessly, carelessly, to perform 
any needed work in a perfunctory manner, without, 
by some sort of a mistake calling down upon him- 
self a penalty for his failure to comply with Nature's 
requirements for accurate work, thoughtful con- 
duct. 

Experiment a little to convince yourself ; watch when 
you make a loose and careless remark, even when you 
are too tired to put your thoughts into words and 
sentences of exact meaning, and you will find that often 
some smart and critical person is standing near to 
call you down with criticism — your well-rested wife, 
most likely. 



VALUE OF OUR COMPULSIONS 69 

Try it ; pick up and return a book to its place on 
the shelf without any particular notice of how it is 
being done; and for the larger number of times you 
will find it wrong end up when you look. Watch to 
see how your bad pronunciation and the grammatical 
errors of your speech are taken up and laughed at. 
How all your thoughtless, sudden and jerky moves 
rebuke you with mistakes. 

A needed part of the discipline of nearly every 
woman's life has to do with the matter of her clothing 
in the way of art and cleanliness. Let her, then, go 
out upon the street with the details of this neglected, 
in a hurry, with her clothing thrown on in a slipshod 
manner, and she will find herself punished by meet- 
ing many, and by seeming to meet almost all per- 
sons she knows and for whose good opinion she cares 
most. 

What is the meaning of that melancholy note which 
we find running through nearly all lives, even in their 
merriest songs and their laughter? It is but a part 
of this move forward into ever-growing freedom of 
action through greater accuracy ; it can have no other 
meaning than the one of the persisting of unexpressed 
ideals, not only through the lure to the forward move, 
but the discomfort of non-fulfillment. 

It is probable that this yearning and this urge, in 
the majority of cases, is, like hunger, the one of im- 
pulse to the sex expression, — is in the interest of the 
species and for the education of the individual; this 
is but one and the older part of this great whole of 



70 HUMAN HARMONIES 

human expression. In this we find the inspiration of 
the sentimental song; in church music it is the wail of 
a soul feeling its way among the shadows of fear and 
uncertainty. 



CHAPTER XI 

Some Evidence of Life's More Remote Purpose 

WE have always before us plenty of evidence 
to show to the person who can interpret its 
meaning, that the human family is engaged 
in a struggle, which it does not yet understand. No 
doubt an occasional person has sensed a fraction of 
the truth, but none of the childish and, in many cases, 
money-making, business guesses, called religion, give 
us much satisfaction. 

It seems a much more rational and a safer guess to 
suppose that this struggle was not set up to gain only 
these specific and transient things of everyday life 
for which men and women so fiercely contend. This 
gain can not be the entire reward and end of action; 
though each item of effort when secured is found to be 
worth a temporary something, this value is much less 
than it has cost in time and energy. 

Yet we have all learned that this experience can 
not well be shirked ; that if we fail to provide ourselves 
with these specific things: with food, with clothing, a 
place to sleep, with friends, with amusements, with a 
variety of things to enjoy, with pursuits, and even 
things of ambitious endeavor, we find ourselves in a 
71 



72 HUMAN HARMONIES 

still worse dilemma than when we work to provide them. 
The happiest life seems to be the one of earnest action 
with not only the elimination, as far as possible, of 
worry as to the results of the action, but with a fixed 
determination to enjoy life. We must act, and we find 
that when we act up to our best we reach the end of 
each specific conquest with a feeling of two-thirds 
satisfaction and one-third disappointment. When we 
refuse to act we find ourselves even more embarrassed. 
The lazy man nearly always thinks he is unfortunate, 
looking with tears of self-pity in his eyes for someone 
to help him. But to help such a person seems to be 
an interference with a natural law, since we find that 
the man of action and generous impulse who does this 
helping is nearly always punished by loss or in- 
gratitude for so doing. Nature seems to have 
equipped every person with a complete evolution 
outfit. 

The human family is thrown into an environment 
where each individual is compelled to take action, and 
trouble flees in proportion to the thoughtful delibera- 
tion that marks his self-controlled action. This seems 
to be one reward for conforming to the requirements 
of the natural law. But he also secures another 
reward in the enjoyment, for a time, of the specific 
fruits of his endeavor. 

Nor can this be all; no one ever finds these rewards 
completely satisfactory; each individual feels that 
there must be more to follow, that there must be a still 
greater compensation for his efforts, somehow stored 



LIFE'S REMOTE PURPOSE 73 

away in the building of indestructible character, indi- 
viduality, personal efficiency, the fruits of which are 
not immediately reaped. 

But the proofs accumulate, that what we are able to 
see as the fruits of conduct are not all there is to be 
gained or lost by conduct. 

Nature seems to reward all her obedient, trustful 
actors in instalments, many rewards often follow the 
series of acts necessary for one single conquest ; en- 
tailed suffering, for the reverse conduct, we see follow- 
ing in the same way. Blind, indeed, is the individual 
who can not see that almost every item of life, if not 
every item, tends to keep us on, and push us and entice 
us along the right track in the direction of a higher life. 
Why we are thrust into this environment, spurred and 
enticed into action, and left to feel and to guess our 
way forward, ever hoping for and only slowly finding 
something better, puzzles us all, but it is a fact in 
which we have plenty of evidence to show there is 
wisdom. 

Every individual life is a slowly moving panorama, 
and each specific act, if made without intelligence, is 
almost as likely to be made in the wrong direction as in 
the right one ; with the use of intelligence, the majority 
of the moves will be in the right direction. Somewhere 
along the driven way each individual learns this, that 
he has a certain freedom of will which he can exercise 
to direct his acts to a self-bettering end. 

However, all of us awaken but slowly. Let us here 
point to a further proof that no person is yet fully 



74 HUMAN HARMONIES 

awakened to the greater purpose of life and the impor- 
tance of his conduct in shaping things to this end. 

As was said in substance above, we are spurred into 
action by the necessities of our existence and submit 
to many of these with a growl. We are lured onward 
by our ambitions and aspirations and are allowed to 
enjoy them as soon as we are sufficiently wise. For a 
time we are also allowed to enjoy the product of our 
pursuits with that feeling of semi-satisfaction that 
usually follows work well performed. 

We find it to be the rule, however, that our accom- 
plishments and our captures, when secured, do not give 
to us quite the satisfaction that we were anticipating 
they would, while engaged in their pursuit, and this 
comparative satisfaction soon begins to decline with 
use. We find it to be the rule, that our interest in 
the objects pursued in life begins to leave us soon after 
they are secured ; in other words, the individual's in- 
terest in the objects of his desire and pursuit, after 
they are captured, soon begins to wane, and it seems 
to be at that place where the service of these objects, 
to the individual, climaxes ; we lose interest in the 
things that have served their purpose, of making us 
act to secure and use them. 

As we move along through life, Nature allows us 
to reap a sufficient amount of the reward of happiness, 
if we will take it, to keep up our courage, to make us 
feel that life is not quite all a bunco game; through 
the laws of our nature she sustains in us the feeling that 
there is more to follow ; through the laws of our growth 



LIFE'S REMOTE PURPOSE 75 

she endeavors to keep alive in us, hope, treating us, 
as we treat children; rewarding us with the things that 
'please us, because we 'partially understand them. 

The lure of our anticipations excites in us great 
pleasure, but the rewards thus secured (through antici- 
pation) are by no means equal to the rewards of 
realization; and the incompleteness of both these re- 
wards seems to show that both anticipation and reali- 
zation are merely instruments, — a means to a larger 
end. 

This decline of interest in our possessions and de- 
sire for something new, for change, new expression, 
this unsatisfied longing, is one of the most important 
facts of all Nature; it is the only thing that prevents 
progress from coming to a dead stop. Usually, with 
partial rather than complete success, men have at- 
tempted to express their views of this fact, in all ages. 

We have, therefore, but a superficial view of this 
fact (of a declining interest in our acquisitions), when 
we are ready to agree that familiarity necessarily 
breeds contempt. That familiarity which amounts to 
knowledge, breeds in us, with few exceptions, love and 
respect, for the reason that there are few, if any, con- 
temptible objects in the world. 

In cases, therefore, where we contemn familiar ob- 
jects, the chances are that we do not have sufficient 
understanding; not yet having reached that larger place 
in our growth of understanding, where the things we 
contemn can serve us ; so we reject them with contempt, 
while better fitting our capacity with smaller things. 



76 HUMAN HARMONIES 

Through the suffering entailed by our experiences 
the moral feeling is evolved, — interest in the things 
of life is evolved through the opening consciousness. 

Familiarity breeds a decline of interest; it is this, 
aided by a desire for change, that enables all life to 
escape from the bondage of habit and prejudice, even 
to break away from its loves and proceed with larger 
and better building. This feeling of enough of a 
thing, is the iconoclastic in Nature. This desire for 
a change, something new, is the constructive and re- 
constructive in Nature. 

It is, therefore, a part of this naturally established 
program of life, that we begin to lose interest in a 
thing the moment we have exhausted its possibilities 
to serve us in an educational way, — to make us act 
either mentally or physically. 

We, then, must have the new experiences that serve 
to lure us onward and to give us satisfaction by serv- 
ing as an outlet for the demand of our inner impetus, 
this desire for further expression. It is this that 
enables us to progress and leave behind us old clothes, 
old thoughts, old moves, old habits, old prejudices, old 
politics and old religions. 

I am writing here of persons who have learned to 
listen to this desire in themselves to make the needed 
forward moves, persons who have not died to most 
things in their lives because of their load of habits and 
prejudices. Old age is no more than prejudice, or a 
concretion of experiences ; we die because we do not 
know how to be, or refuse to be intelligently plastic. 



LIFE'S REMOTE PURPOSE 77 

Death lifts us out of our paradoxes, takes us out of our 
physical, mental and moral ruts, pulls us out of the 
blind pockets, caves and cellars into which we have 
run and from which we are not wise enough to turn 
and retrace our way. Nature breaks up all our shells 
and releases us whenever we become helpless with our 
loads of foolishness. 

Decrease of interest in anything is nearly always 
accompanied by the awakening of a new interest that 
lures us onward to some new pursuit. 

Why is it ever thus ? Why are we pulled and driven 
onward continuously into new experiences? Why do 
we soon tire of monotony, and find ourselves invited, 
nay, almost forced by our feelings, to seek the variety 
that breaks up this monotony? Why do we continu- 
ously advance unless there is something to go for, even 
greater objects than we are now able to see? 

What is the meaning of all these external coercions, 
these compulsions and propulsions, these jolts and 
badgers of life ; these failures, accidents, disasters and 
agonies that hinder more in this life than they help, 
unless they are spurs to action and a means to culti- 
vate in us knowledge and feeling? Are these desires 
of ours, also these anticipations, this hope, this faith ; 
all these promises which we find implanted in ourselves 
and to which we no more than half listen ; are all these 
impelling feelings Nature's lies? Are all these building 
experiences, into which we are enticed and driven, 
instituted merely to make of us a Creator's playthings, 
set up for His amusement, and, like our toys, when 



78 HUMAN HARMONIES 

they have served what seems a fleeting fancy, thrown 
aside, their individuality destroyed with the breaking 
up of their tangible forms? 

There is ever present in both the individual and in 
his surroundings that which urges him to keep ever 
moving in the direction of greater mental and moral 
heights. 

The morality of human beings, their love of fair 
play, their desire to act justly, each toward the other 
— to be reliable, increases with their increase of wis- 
dom. In the proportion that one acquires general 
and common knowledge does he see it to be that which 
brings harmony of human action, the possibility of 
co-operation ; and the more does he desire to impart it 
to others, to the end that all may rise into the joys 
of a life that is possible, but which perhaps no one has 
yet realized. 

Because we are shocked at this daily panorama of 
human disaster, horror, ignorance, sickness, poverty 
and crime, we tend to complain very bitterly at the 
injustice of Nature. But if, when moved to complain, 
we have in mind the discoveries of science we at once 
realize that human judgment is altogether too small 
an instrument with which to measure these creative 
plans and motives. These so-called happenings that 
make us weep seem to us terrible to the degree that we 
are small. 

Were it not true that Nature is working on a scale 
of justice, and a plan for human unfoldment into 
wisdom and happiness, infinitely transcending mortal 



LIFE'S REMOTE PURPOSE 79 

vision, man would have but little at the goal. Reader, 
if this desire for a higher life of wisdom and happiness, 
which we find so strongly implanted in ourselves, and 
which, also, we are led to hope to realize through 
honest effort, has no meaning, there is little in this 
life that matters. For, under existing conditions of 
education and of business most men who are obliged 
to work out what they know and have, find they must 
die just when they know enough and have the means 
to live. As we see it, this is unjust. 

Variety is not only the spice of life, because we find 
in it the pleasures that change of pursuit and experi- 
ence give ; but it is, also, one among the great, though 
but half discovered and used secrets of education ; it 
is even the secret of good health through anabolism, — 
one of the secrets of physical repair. 

If the onward move of life is to be kept on an 
ascending plane, it must be furnished with a variety of 
expressions ; then, the greater the pressure of the life 
from within, the greater will be the demand for variety 
and the faster the movement of onward and upward 
change. 

Even to one who is but fairly able to interpret the 
meaning of human acts and thoughts, the evidence of 
this is plainly seen in nearly all lives. A panoramic 
view illustrating this onward move, can be had by be- 
ginning our observations with the less evolved whom we 
know and ascending from this monotonous life of small 
desire and weak expression to that of the most highly 
evolved men and women who, in spite of immense 



80 HUMAN HARMONIES 

obstacles, fight their way to pinnacles of greatness. 
But at the end of each achievement the aspirant, though 
realizing a gain, finds himself no nearer to the end 
of the things which he wishes to accomplish than when 
he started, in fact the number and intensity of his 
desires and ambition increase instead of growing less. 

So it follows, that, from the least to the greatest, no 
one is ever quite satisfied, with what he is doing, or 
with what he has, however advantageous it may be; he 
always wants something else, — to do something else and 
something more. 

We find the old man, to some extent, seeks this ex- 
perience just as long as he can stand on his feet and 
when he can no longer do anything he soon frets him- 
self to death. His conduct is usually explained by 
saying that it is his greed for making money and we 
wonder why he does this when he cannot take any- 
thing that we can see along with him when he dies. 
But whatever may be the small and tangible human 
motive for action, there is abundance of evidence to 
show that the superior intelligence which set man in 
motion is working through him on a plan of growth 
and enjoyment of a much larger size than the one 
of which he is now conscious. 

The wisdom of life, then, would seem to be to co- 
operate with this power to achieve this larger end. 
Even the study of astronomy should convince almost 
any person that the power which set in operation the 
Universe and keeps it running harmoniously, is worthy 
of trust. 



LIFE'S REMOTE PURPOSE 81 

From what man has already accomplished, we are 
compelled to infer that he will increase in knowledge, 
and that this knowledge will give to him a continuously 
increasing power over his environment, and over him- 
self to the extent that disease will in time be no more ; 
his future realizations will be far beyond our present 
dreams. And the present outlook, even no farther 
than science has now advanced, holds out the hope that 
the way of continuous physical renewal will be dis- 
covered. If this happens, what then about long life 
and old age? What about time in which to fulfill 
human desires? 

Children pass through their experiences of expres- 
sion very rapidly, as all can testify, who have had 
their patience, and their inventive power to please, 
taxed with their care. Everybody has noticed how 
rapidly they exhaust the possibilities of their toys 
and their environment. This forward move diminishes 
as they go onward into life, because of the gradually 
growing fixity of their physical structure. The 
younger the soul, we may suspect or speculate, the 
faster does this ossification take place ; the older, the 
more has the individual learned of how to keep up the 
renewing change by means of physical readjustment 
and mental control of processes, in a way that gives to 
himself more and more building time in each succeeding 
life's experience. 

We are all merely children, and these things of life 
with which older persons have to do, and over which 
they work so seriously, are but their toys, by means 



82 HUMAN HARMONIES 

of which they are drawn and driven into the experiences 
which, if properly used, will carry them onward to a 
larger measure and higher quality of individual ex- 
pression ; and sequentially into rewards of merit ; that, 
out in the distance, are far too great for our present 
understanding. 

Life furnishes us with abundance of material for 
to-day's practice, much more than we can either use or 
understand, to cultivate in us the larger understanding 
that will be ours on the morrow ; to-morrow we will 
find a new supply to continue the building; and in 
this onward move, a supply will always be available for 
the building of our stairways. 

It is here in this apparent jumble that we are driven 
to cultivate knowledge and will, to use judgment in 
making discriminations, to sort, to select and to clas- 
sify objective things for the increase of the conscious- 
ness that it gives. But we fail to realize all that we 
accomplish for the reason that the larger part of our 
building is behind the scenes, stored in that realm, the 
things of which, to our present senses, have no tangi- 
bility. 



CHAPTER XII 
A Philosophical Delusion 

ALL these objects of our daily pursuit must be 
opportunities to add to this invisible structure 
of ours. It can not be so much the girl and 
the automobile; the bread and butter and clothing; 
neither can it be the farm, the business, the mine nor 
the office, that we are seeking with such an outlay of 
energy to obtain, and with the feeling that we must 
suffer very much if we fail; these things must be 
merely incidental to the larger and concealed purpose. 
It can not be so much the book that any one of us may 
be writing, which in itself is considerably foolish, the 
railroad that we may be building, the souls that we 
may be trying to save with some childhood religion ; 
none of these can be the real object of all this action. 
The immediate rewards in tangible things that all this 
struggle brings to either the individual or to the race, 
are all too contemptibly fleeting and inconsequential 
to be worth the effort. The much more reasonable 
inference would seem to be that the object of all this 
is the building of indestructible character; is the ex- 
perience stored up in the ego, — the more complex and 
powerful individuality. 

Desire seems to have been set up as a guide to 



84 HUMAN HARMONIES 

animate action, but in the human being it gradually 
ceases to be a guide and takes the place of a lure, grad- 
ually and in the proportion that its place as a guide is 
usurped by the knowledge gained by experience. The 
will is the faculty that operates the decisions of the 
judgment, sets in constructive motion both desire and 
knowledge ; these are the tools of self-culture. 

The uncontrolled feelings are just as likely to act 
destructively as constructively ; the uncontrolled feel- 
ings act almost as blindly as the electricity of the 
clouds. 

To control the feelings is not to destroy them, but 
to conserve, to strengthen, to refine their power and to 
direct the flow of energy thus engendered to higher 
ends. 

We are here thrust into an environment bristling 
with energies and opportunities ; with things crude and 
running wild and thrown at us for our exercise ; things 
with which we may practice building. 

The best fruits do not grow naturally, — wild in the 
woods ; they are taken from their wild state and im- 
proved by cultivation to better serve human needs. 
In giving to us these unfinished things, the great end 
of our unfoldment is served; our ability to see the 
possibility of their improvement flatters us into action ; 
in perfecting this unfinished work we feel that we are 
doing something w T orth while. 

So is it, in the matter of being unfinished, with all 
married pairs ; they are two bundles of crude practice 
material, brought together and fastened with the 



A PHILOSOPHICAL DELUSION 85 

one thing, and about the only thing, on which they can 
(and this imperfectly) agree; in the bulk of their men- 
tal equipment, if it can be called such, they are wholly 
unlike ; this gives them plenty of room and things to 
fight about and learn. 

The fact that these objects of our desires, placed 
before us by Nature for our pursuit, give to us less 
pleasure in the possession and use than we had antici- 
pated during the time of our efforts to obtain them, 
has given rise to philosophers and schools of philosophy 
holding to the belief that these objects are all phantoms 
and delusions. 

A philosophy such as this is builded on the belief 
that the pleasure of using these enticing objects after 
they are secured, is the sole end of the pursuit and the 
capture. They find it difficult to believe that this 
securing the aims of life can not be the sole purpose 
and the end. They fail to see that this action must 
be storing a larger and better product beyond the 
individual's capacity to realize. Anyhow, this " de- 
lusion " theory of life is not a practical one. 

So, it naturally follows that, when persons with this 
limited outlook, find themselves disappointed because 
of the inevitable decline of interest in the use of their 
acquisitions, they feel that Nature has played them 
false, — that she has deceived them. 

Though they have derived much pleasure from the 
pursuit as well as from the capture and use, they are 
all too apt to become pessimistic because the pleasure 
is not permanent and the satisfaction not complete. 



86 HUMAN HARMONIES 

They are made up of, constitute, the great, narrow, 
impatient, intolerant, get-rich-quick company. 

The onward move of life, its panorama of change, 
the mutability of all forms of human expression, .have 
failed to convince them of the necessity of all this 
change to keep up human growth and happiness; it 
has failed to show them that the purpose of life can not 
be these transient things and that this onward move 
holds the evidence of a greater purpose, one that is 
largely concealed from human view, only because man 
has not yet grown sufficiently to see what this pur- 
pose is. In this primitive condition of mind men 
attempt and believe in all sorts of permanent struc- 
tures, and they desire and try to obtain all sorts of 
complete things, fair samples of which we find in 
the way they attempt to write and to buy books and 
to make for themselves complete heavens or abodes to 
follow this life. 

This sort of adolescent philosophy is bound to wreck 
the transient earth lives of many of those who are 
crossing its stage. It is this that explains pessimism 
and many a suicide. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Co-Experience the Secret of Common Interest 
and Harmony 

SO very plain is the cause of domestic turmoil, to 
the observing, reading and thinking person, who 
stands in a place of daily mental contact with 
both men and women that he is inclined to wonder, not 
that it is not less, but that it is not greater. In this 
matter of managing foolishness Nature has set up a 
very wonderful plan. 

What each person believes is a pick-up jumble of 
truth and falsehood that antagonizes the beliefs of 
others picked up in the same way ; of actual knowledge 
one meets with but little. In the business, the social, 
and the domestic life there are but few harmonious 
combinations found, for the reason that there is but 
little knowledge held in common; knowledge having a 
common consent is a thing of slow evolutionary growth. 

It often happens that two persons, holding pre- 
cisely the same opinion concerning a given matter, be- 
lieve that they differ entirely in opinion when in fact 
they differ chiefly in expression ; it is a matter of the 
use and understanding of words. The average person 
is extremely limited in his power of verbal expression, 
and in this stress of life he is either unable or finds 
87 



88 HUMAN HARMONIES 

little time to understand others, even when their 
thoughts are most clearly expressed. The lies, bad 
tempers and dishonesty of men and women must, also, 
be considered as a hindrance to mutual understanding; 
also discomforts due to poor health and poverty. Nor 
do we need to increase the list of barriers to mutual 
understandings to make us wonder that there is not 
even less working harmony among human beings than 
there actually is. 

It is general and common knowledge that gives good 
health and the power of expression, — also that enables 
us to understand the difficulties with which others are 
struggling and to be kind, tolerant, patient and good- 
natured when trying to arrive at mutual understand- 
ings under difficulties. 

Knowledge gives understanding, and with this one is 
enabled to see that the mistakes of others, their care- 
less remarks, their unfair statements, even their un- 
truthfulness, should be neither too quickly nor too 
harshly criticised. But on the contrary, they should 
be given time, and be led by kindly and adroit question- 
ing to correct their errors. 

Harsh correction usually arouses the antagonism 
of a bad temper ; this spurs the criticised to make an 
argument in defense of himself; and in this defense 
he is very apt to lie increasingly, stubbornly, adhering 
to his first and erroneous statement, utterly refusing 
to correct himself. 

The world is slowly awakening to one after another 
of the factors of human progress; but we are yet far 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 89 

from realizing the importance of reliable speech and 
conduct as a means to secure a larger freedom of action 
among men. They can not yet trust each other. 

Men and women are attracted into groups and pairs, 
— they are made friends, chums and affinities by having 
the same or common information, common memories, 
and, as a consequence, feel the same about things ; 
they agree through their feelings by the likes that 
come through memories of their associations and the 
like experiences that they have passed through, and 
can talk about and be understood. 

It is by the drawing and cohering power of the 
feelings born of association, this common experience 
among human beings, this power of habit that persists 
through the feelings that builds cities. 

This is the way Nature works on the constructing 
and conserving side of all progress, and it must be 
watched for the reason that it tends to produce rigidity 
of form in everything. 

There is the other side of progress to be considered, 
— the iconoclastic, the breaking up of old forms to 
make new, the liberalizing, change, variety. 

We all find, however, that it is no easy matter to 
gain the needed freedom required by the law of our 
own progress, by breaking away from our habit-formed 
loves, by discarding our idols. Nearly all persons act 
within the habit-worn grooves of least resistance. We 
nearly all return again and again to the same hotel, 
the same restaurant, and even to the same seat in the 
same restaurant; country people are very apt to be- 



90 HUMAN HARMONIES 

come quickly and immovably fixed into narrow grooves 
of action. 

These two sides of progress need intelligent manage- 
ment ; habit needs understanding and watching or it 
will soon become a tyrant; changes that are not con- 
structive are useless; the needed thing is wise readjust- 
ment. In the building of human affinities and har- 
monies both variety and the feeling ties of habit must 
be used ; we need revising change. 

The chief value of fashion consists of cultivating the 
ability to make a change, of making habits and of 
breaking away from them. 

The active religion and politics of nearly all human 
beings are fixed upon them by fear and early education, 
intensified by a stubborn and unbreakable habit ; they 
are held and made to act like puppets, by feeling rather 
than by reason. It is this that makes the building 
experience of the average life a small and narrow one. 

Through the feelings, excited by memories of co- 
experience, we are able to account for the evolution 
of all loves ; loves are first biological ; they are next 
social. And in its final analysis, this feeling that 
comes of association may prove to be the secret of 
chemical affinity, the loves of molecules and atoms. 

So it follows, that if we are to intelligently manage 
our own upward growth, we must keep ever in mind 
the fact that all habits or loves tend to enslave us 
through their comfortable action — they keep us from 
breaking away and going on. 

Nor must we forget that all loves, all habits, all 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 91 

conventional bonds and tyrannies have a lesson to teach 
us by compelling us to perform certain needed work, 
disciplining us ; and the proper way to be rid of their 
tyranny is to interpret their meaning and learn the 
lessons they impose. We remain in slavery and suffer 
just so long as we shirk the learning of the lessons. 

The price of freedom is knowledge ; we can deposit 
our conventional slaveries on the scrap heap and escape 
in freedom the moment we have the needed knowledge; 
forms and habits are, like our bodies, merely the tem- 
porary instruments by means of which we obtain our 
building experiences. 

Even after we secure some small measure of freedom, 
we are obliged to learn its proper use by making many 
mistakes in experimenting, in trying. This is why 
Nature deals out her treasures of freedom in small 
quantities, particularly to the ignorant — that they 
may not be too grossly abused. 

For the above reasons, nearly all married life is a 
scorching, chastening experience that most persons 
need for its discipline, — its educating value, if for 
nothing else. 

Between the strong sex attraction that holds the 
man and the woman together, and the mental antago- 
nisms, the different opinions which they hold that tend 
to drive them apart, there is usually in operation a 
very active and interesting little pandemonium, a tur- 
moil that most married pairs succeed in concealing 
from the world by keeping the curtains down. 

They are like business men who make bad bargains; 



92 HUMAN HARMONIES 

they do not like to have the facts become known. This 
effort at concealment is a very excellent discipline in 
self-control. 

The fact of the matter is, that few men will ever 
learn much till they are matrimonially harnessed and 
are compelled to fight out a little more information 
in the treadmill of the family life. Nearly all men 
are too fickle and lazy to do much before they are 
married ; for their spur to action they depend to a very 
large extent, not only upon the sympathy of a woman, 
but upon her natural tendency to flatter, to see in 
them exaggerated possibilities and virtues. If they 
can be amused, furnished with plenty to eat and al- 
lowed to growl, to snap, to snarl and to find fault 
whenever they feel like doing so, they get along very 
well with each succeeding day's work. But on the 
whole they prefer to go through life with as little effort 
as possible. 

There is an unnecessary amount of this family tur- 
moil, and one aim of this essay is to show that much 
of it can be quite easily avoided, by volunteering to 
learn quickly that which this turmoil teaches slowly. 
All that any pair at first needs, is a desire to learn of 
sufficient strength to enable them to act; knowledge 
can then be soon acquired and harmony will follow. 
There must, however, be no shirking the lessons required 
by life ; shirking means trouble; it is this that explains 
the present undesirable condition. 

There is a compulsory law of education set up in 
the conditions of life ; the education of coercion and 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 93 

turmoil, which we greatly increase by fighting against 
its imposed lessons. 

Without understanding the requirements of the 
natural law of our onward and upward growth and of 
using it educationally (in the way of using all material 
at hand and when this is exhausted of seeking new 
material and experiences, to awaken new desires, make 
new brain-channels, and thus keep the brain material 
plastic) it is absolutely impossible for most married 
pairs to feel for any great length of time anything 
more than a deadened interest in each other. An in- 
teresting harmony is impossible without that educa- 
tional growth that comes from an intelligent use of 
variety. Variety is not only the spice of life, a neces- 
sity of pleasure, but it furnishes the material upon 
which the mind acts to complete the educational plan 
of Nature. 

The average husband and wife soon become dull and 
prosy and uninteresting to each other, because each 
has exhausted the possibilities of the other to serve 
in the entertaining and instructive way demanded by 
the natural unfoldment of their lives. 

Most married pairs have " talked themselves out," 
as it is commonly expressed. The fact of the matter is, 
they are out of ideas. 

Both the man and the woman are evidently here on 
this earth for some definite self-building experiences, 
and we may well reason that these experiences are theirs 
of natural right to find elsewhere if they can not find 
them at home. And, what holds still further true, this 



94 HUMAN HARMONIES 

will be done by the irrepressible in spite of gossip ; so 
this persistence of all energy that is found seeking 
greater intelligence for itself by experience through 
organized forms, would be better understood in the 
interest of a more harmonious working — clear the way, 
give it a chance, aim at something to feed on. 

Every human being has a certain amount of mental 
energy to expand, and the brightness of the life and 
the pressure for expression is in proportion to the 
amount ; if this energy can not find for itself a legiti- 
mate variety upon which to feed for its constructive 
operations, it is very apt to act foolishly and destruc- 
tively. It is certain to find an outlet for itself, it 
must have something to do. In the case of the married 
pair, this something is very often a quarrel. One of 
the two has become interested in someone else; this 
natural hunger for change, this craving for an educa- 
tional and entertaining variety, the brighter of the two 
is almost certain to satisfy. There is a tremendous 
tendency of the family life to gravitate into routine 
ruts, the same old stories, the same old acts, the same 
old expressions, this lack of forming a habit of furnish- 
ing anything new till change becoming impossible is ab- 
solutely killing. It is this monotony of life that ex- 
plains these startling modern affinities, it is the desire 
for something new, a change is required, advancing 
ideals have awakened new desires. If your wife is a 
reader, a thinker and a searcher, and you are a stupid 
plodder, " watch out " ; but the same thing can be said 
where the man begins to be stirred with new ideals. It 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 95 

must not be forgotten that each individual limits him- 
self, he has but little to give. So, a new affinity is 
soon exhausted, and the new often becomes, in a short 
time, even less endurable than the old. 

There is to be found an occasional couple who have 
stumbled upon a combination of natural sex harmony, 
but even the best of these are far from what most 
of us have in mind as the possible degree of attainment. 

When we speak of affinities, soul-mates, we do not 
mean the ideal which we have in mind; but a whole- 
some, common-sense combination that works with just 
enough in harmony to make it interesting. Few of 
those even are found in practice and the ideal exists 
only in the imagination. 

And yet, both individuals of all pairs, think, because 
they feel it to be so, that they have found this ideal on 
the day on which their alliance is legalized. 

The newly married are like real estate men, who 
during a time of active sale are unable to rid themselves 
of the feeling that this transfer will keep up continu- 
ously, even when they declare that they know better; 
they, alike, are absolutely dominated and their reason 
submerged by their feelings. 

So, it is for this reason that we usually find surprise 
and disappointment accompanying the wane of this 
delightful delusion, at which time they often begin 
cultivating opposite, instead of like fields of interest ; 
begin educating themselves apart instead of together. 

This is particularly true if they happen to be living 
in a city where variety is great, and possible affinities 



96 HUMAN HARMONIES 

common. The honeymoon wane is often followed by 
dislike and even hatred; there is no holding power to 
take its place. 

All the experiences of life, including work, need to 
be conducted with intelligence, and never in any instance 
be carried beyond the wholesome-fatigue point, in their 
use, and on to exhaustion. It is evident that with 
right use, all the activities of life would be enjoyable 
and appreciative interest could be kept up ; the pleas- 
ures of all functionings could not only be kept keen 
but increased in power. Instead, it is due to the gen- 
eral ignorance of the laws of human functionings, that 
we nearly all deaden and kill outright the feelings 
furnished by our best natural inheritances ; as, for 
example, in the case of the dyspeptic who has destroyed 
by overindulgence, his power to enjoy his food. 

There is a tendency of sensations that please in- 
tensely, like those produced by eating and music, to 
call for over and exhausting indulgence. 

In particular do the sensations produced by the 
older animal functionings often become, with unbridled 
indulgence, dominant and tyrannical if not killed out- 
right ; but this is as a rule only in the case of persons 
having but little, either of will or of information. 
The conduct of the average person is determined by 
his feelings, and of these he is often the victim, as in 
cases of drunkenness. The old animal in us needs 
watching, so do habits ; they both tend to dominate and 
should be controlled and used intelligently. 

Life, in order to give the greatest pleasure and the 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 97 

best education, must have the use of sufficient variety; 
but there is a law of use that requires rhythmical action, 
a rest between acts that conforms to the relaxation 
intervals of the wave law of motion ; there are also 
natural resistances and repulsions encountered that 
must be either mastered or escaped by a change of 
direction. In the daily life this takes the form of 
tact. 

This part of life is seldom sufficiently well under- 
stood in anything, so we find that for this reason, if 
a married pair do not soon become tied with the children 
which they can not avoid, they are held pretty loosely 
together ; the sequel to this is usually a hunt, by either 
the one or the other, for a new affinity. The hunt is 
usually made by the man. 

The larger designs of Nature are beyond human 
understanding, — they are worked out behind the scenes 
of the human life stage and so enticingly presented as 
to be coercive. Marriage serves two great purposes 
that we can see ; the perpetuation of the species and the 
education of the pair engaged in the struggle of service. 

Of course, we understand and we expect others to 
understand that a few harmonious matings, which we 
call affinity matches, do take place. 

But in all but a few cases, these harmonies that are 
called natural are the product of education ; if they are 
natural, they are so, only by being the product of what 
may well be called a higher naturalness, the natural- 
ness of culture. Incompatibilities are very largely due 
to ignorance. There is always before us plenty of 



98 HUMAN HARMONIES 

evidence to show that men and women who are drawn 
together in marriage, are at first attracted and held 
by common memories; notice how those who marry 
become acquainted and interested. 

There nearly always precedes and gradually com- 
bines with that attraction which men and women feel 
for each other, and which we have named love, some 
other item or items of life in which both are interested ; 
your own case may serve to illustrate and furnish the 
proof. 

They do not always, but usually pair off within their 
own circle of social interests. The first mutual interest 
is usually inspired by some mundane thing, this interest 
expands and ripens into a love that culminates in 
marriage, but the first attraction is often anything but 
love at first sight. The beginning of interest may 
have been a book, a concert, a poem, a journey, a 
picnic, a horse, a dog or any other item of an experience 
which the two have passed through in company, remem- 
ber, and can recall. The use of this power of associate 
experience has not yet been half-learned in any walk 
of life ; in this particular use of building a more har- 
monious family life it is almost entirely overlooked. 
It is, however, better understood by the woman than by 
the man. She is naturally a better educator. 

Parents and educators and married people themselves 
should come to see how this first interest may be used 
as a nucleus around which to build other items of 
interest into a segregation of interests, that in a short 
time grow into a tremendously strong bond of sym- 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 99 

pathy, of education, of enthusiasm, harmonious com- 
panionship, and co-operative unfoldment. 

Reader, how many of the books that you like, does 
your wife like? How many have you and your wife 
read together and discussed? Is it not a fact that 
you have little common interest in books? And a still 
further fact that you require quick response from each 
other or you are offended, that you are touchy, vain 
and egotistical ; often childish and slow to recover from 
your spells of ill nature? 

Let us be natural, you say? Very well; what is 
naturalness ? 

We are contending that the product of 'voluntary 
culture is precisely as natural as that of involuntary 
culture, even though it may be called artificial. In 
fact, this later product of culture or education, though 
crude in its beginning, will come to be in time a higher 
form of naturalness. We find that in all evolved forms 
the higher has unfolded from the lower by means of 
gradual change. 

In the human life, the voluntary changes emerge 
gradually from the involuntary, the rapid growth of 
education evolves from the slow growth of experience. 

All the higher forms of feeling, appreciated and 
understood, are the product of culture ; in particular 
does this hold true of aesthetics, love of the beautiful, 
in all of its many forms. Historically speaking, ro- 
mantic love, as a conspicuous example of cultural feel- 
ing, is in its operation of comparatively recent date. 
As we go back in history, the higher forms of feeling, 



100 HUMAN HARMONIES 

such as for beauty and morality, seem to grow less in 
proportion to the distance retraced ; besides, it requires 
no close observer to see how little there is to be found 
among the less cultured of to-day. All their emotions 
are of the wild, uncontrolled, hit or miss order that 
some enjoy calling natural. 

Of course, the truly cultured person is a very rare 
specimen, for the reason that under our unjust and 
embruting economic system true education is impos- 
sible. No person obtains what belongs to him, — some 
are cheated by having too little and others by having 
too much. 

Country life gives but little to the uneducated farmer 
for the reason that he does not know what to do with 
what he has, he can use his time and his means only 
in the crudest sort of way. There are thousands of 
educational opportunities, in the way of books, maga- 
zines and papers always before him, but he has not 
been sufficiently awakened to appreciate their value nor 
to realize to what extent he might use them. So, right 
at his door are thousands of opportunities to which he 
is totally blind. 

But the untaught city dweller is subject to the same 
sort of slavery and does the same sort of repining for 
the same reason ; so he loafs away his spare time instead 
of trying to learn something. 

It is for the reason that both are practically un- 
taught, that men and women awaken in married life 
to find themselves in all sorts of trying situations. 
They, from parents and from schools, are entitled to 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 101 

the proper instruction. This should be begun early 
and kept up continuously, for the reason that Nature 
matures them physically before she gives them time, 
in an experience way, to learn anything. 

Nature's way of physically maturing human beings, 
we may believe to be a fair way of doing things by 
supposing that we do not know as much as Nature ; that 
what she has planned to make of and do with us is 
concealed for the reason that it is altogether too large 
for our present caliber. 

Anyhow, it is largely because of the mistakes which 
this neglect of education entails, that there are found 
a great many of both men and women, who have made, 
or think they have made, a first or even a second mis- 
take in marriage, looking for " affinities," — for natural 
or temperamental fitness in marriage, so-called " soul- 
mates." These have not yet learned that, as a rule, 
" affinities " are much more easily cultivated than dis- 
covered. Possibly these soul-mates do exist, but if so 
they are so badly strayed, mixed and confused that they 
seldom find their proper places in this life's expression. 
Of course, who can say that this soul-mate idea may 
or may not be a fact, and that the separation and 
straying may not also be a fact ; and have for its pur- 
pose a valuable building struggle in the effort that each 
is obliged to make in finding its way back to its mate 
or complement? Many of these affinity-searchers seem 
to have very crude ideals and the object of their search 
to partake much of the nature of the stage hero or 
heroine or some of the characters in the thousand and 



102 HUMAN HARMONIES 

one novels that they have read, their ideals are foolish 
because they have been behind the scenes of neither the 
stage nor of real life — they lack information, educa- 
tion, culture, wisdom. 

We must never forget that every life is filled with the 
inharmony of unhappy occurrences in proportion to the 
ignorance of the individual; unfortunate experiences, 
most of which could be forestalled by a wisdom of life 
that may be learned. Occurrences in our lives, either 
good or bad, are never fortuitous, to us they are hap- 
penings only because we are not well enough informed 
to see the cause. 

It seems very probable that could we understand and 
act up to, perfectly, every natural requirement, our 
harmony and joy of life would be perfect. The in- 
harmony is the going wrong in the learning how to go. 

No person, in this present, crude stage of our un- 
foldment, can realize the importance of reliable conduct, 
morality. The entailed disturbance of one lie or one 
dishonest act may be something enormous on many lives. 
Morality is the product of suffering, and is of slow 
growth for the reason that it takes so much suffering to 
teach one lesson. Morality is too intangible a thing to 
be readily understood. It is even much more difficult to 
teach than to put into books. Effective morality is a 
thing of feeling and the most important thing for edu- 
cators to consider in the instruction of the child, is to 
make his moral education a feeling one; the education 
that does not do this is a failure and has turned loose 
in the community a dangerous citizen. There is to-day 



CO-EXPERIENCE THE SECRET 103 

altogether too much of the compulsory kind and the 
paying kind of morality, morality in which there is no 
moral feeling. This is a fault of the education of the 
child, coupled with an economic system that often 
compels men to do wrong. 

Just a word more to finish this chapter: So much 
are the man and the woman absorbed in the chief thing 
which brought them together, that they do not under- 
stand it to be necessary to cultivate any new common 
interests while engaged in exhausting this one. Hence, 
with most couples, there soon after marriage follows 
indifference and a desire for new experiences ; next, in 
order, there follows absolute nausea, and a determina- 
tion on the part of one or the other to have a change 
that gives these new experiences. 

Each has exhausted the possibilities of the other, 
particularly has the more intelligent of the two reached 
the limit of the other's power to entertain, or the 
power in any uplifting sense to educate ; there is usually 
found, also, combined with this great lack, a stubborn 
unwillingness on the part of the one who knows least 
to learn from the more intelligent one. 

As a rule, it is not so difficult for somebody else to 
educate, to liberalize, or to reform a narrow, vain, self- 
ish, egotistical, quick- and bad-tempered man or woman 
as it is for the husband or wife. It somehow happens 
that the moment marriage takes place, the lesser of the 
two thinks he or she is equal to or above the other 
in intellect, that marriage not only equalizes brains but 
often makes the inferior practically the superior. So 



104 HUMAN HARMONIES 

it follows that the best time for either to educate or to 
reform is before marriage. 

However, there is no good reason why persons of 
ordinary intelligence can not be shown and should not 
learn after marriage. And unless both the husband 
and wife do conform to the entertaining and educa- 
tional requirements of this law of Nature, by contin- 
ually bringing in a new supply of unfolding variety, 
new things learned and to learn, they can not get the 
best from life. Without this, life soon sinks into a 
dullness that often becomes intolerable to the mentally 
active person ; then follows disagreement and soon after 
that, separation. 

This holds particularly true in the present day of 
books and magazines, and consequently rapidly ad- 
vancing ideals. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The Appliances of Love and the Purpose of Hope 

THIS plea, in the interest of the harmony and 
permanence of the home life, by means of an 
educational fitness, would be wholly unnecessary, 
were the one particular attraction called love, around 
which so much romance has been woven and on which 
men and women depend almost entirely at the start, 
sufficient to act as a permanent tie. But we all know 
that it is wholly inadequate, — it soon wanes and often 
palls. 

The permanent ties of the home life and happiness, 
depend more upon the way we see and use our other 
opportunities ; things of the mind, of subsistence, of 
pleasure, of social functions, of personal habits, of 
economics, of politics and of religion. Permanent hap- 
piness depends much more upon a wise philosophy 
of life than upon that first and strong attraction which 
most men and women proceed to rapidly squander. 

The things that we obtain through much effort are 
the things that we learn to understand sufficiently well 
to appreciate. It is the very exceptional person who 
can so appreciate things of value secured without con- 
scious effort, as to use them with economy, in anything. 
The story of the Prodigal Son explains the abuse of 
105 



106 HUMAN HARMONIES 

the pleasure of eating, — it is an old animal inheritance 
that has cost us no conscious effort, and for this rea- 
son appears to be too cheap to require careful use; 
hence, trouble arises. So it is with everything in life. 
No wise man would leave to his children or other rela- 
tives a fortune that they have not earned. This gen- 
eration fully appreciates neither American Indepen- 
dence nor modern civilization. 

The greatest privilege in life is the one of being 
obliged to make constructive effort. 

To one of little experience, little education, little 
reading and little reflection, life seems to be made up 
of items having distinctly marked lines of separation. 
But the individual who succeeds in learning much, will, 
with this increase of outlook, discover that, as a matter 
of fact, no one thing stands by itself alone, — that all 
life is inseparably mingled, — is a fabric, a web of inter- 
dependent items held together by hidden wires behind 
the scenes ; and that life's experiences become har- 
monious to the individual in proportion to his in- 
crease of ability to see the dependent relationship of 
things. 

So in the matter of love ; though it may be " the 
greatest thing in the world," it is dependent; in order 
to operate well it must be accompanied by its material 
appliances, be properly nourished; when made to feed 
on itself it is self-devouring — can not be sustained any 
more than physical existence can be kept up on scenery, 
the common expression being, " You can not live on 
love and scenery alone." 



LOVE AND HOPE 107 

Though ever so real, the permanence of love depends 
more on its prose setting of practice than upon its 
poetical beginning. The attraction we term love is, 
from a less to a greater degree, the property of all life. 
Among human beings, the courtship exaltation is Na- 
ture's intoxication, set up to draw the man and the 
woman into a combination which, without this glamor 
of delight, would perhaps never take place. 

Nor is it alone in marriage that we see the working 
of this almost coercive power of desire. In a slightly 
modified form, and with a less degree of intensity in its 
action, we see that human beings are led into almost 
every new undertaking in life, — it may be the expecta- 
tion of some gain. But, by this hope, this poetry of 
anticipation, men and women are enticed into enter- 
prises which, without this elation, this enthusiasm of 
feeling, they would never undertake. And the more 
alive a person is, the keener his consciousness, the more 
he has of this divine fire, the more miraculous will 
appear the achievements of his life. 

It also holds true in enterprise, but of course, more 
so in matters of love, that while this feeling of elation 
is on, men and women are too much dominated by the 
emotion to think and to reason sanely, — so dominant 
and overpowering, indeed, is it found to be that per- 
sons in love feel that theirs is the only case of true and 
lasting love since the beginning of the world. Failing 
to understand that the entrancement which comes to 
all at least once in a lifetime, can not last forever, they 
seldom set about the preparation of a substitute, — a 



108 HUMAN HARMONIES 

new love to take its place when the old has departed 
on " the wings of the morning." 

Hence, we find the sequel to this to be, that the keen 
interest in the married life often goes out with the 
departure of its poetry, or exhausted source of first 
love. 



CHAPTER XV 

Some Type Features of Sex 

IT has been shown above, that the great field in 
which the two types of mind, known as the male 
and the female, function alike, is the one that has 
been most neglected by educators ; whereas, it should 
have received most attention, for the reason, that here 
is where mutual interest is needed ; it is here that they 
meet to agree or to disagree. 

It is this lack of mutual interest, due to want of 
common knowledge that, more than anything else, ex- 
plains why it is that married pairs without children 
so often find themselves inclined to quarrel. The sexes 
should always be educated together. The man and the 
woman who undertake to share alike the good and bad 
fortunes of their lives, should each know as well as 
possible with what the other has to contend. 

But there are two ways of mental functioning, one 
of which is peculiar to the male and the other to the 
female mind, they are considerably unlike ; there is a 
psychology of sex as well as a physiology of sex. To 
briefly examine some of the more pronounced features 
of these two fields is the purpose of this chapter. 

There is a difference in the ways in which the man 
and the woman look out upon the world and view life, 
109 



110 HUMAN HARMONIES 

that is due to their respective functions in life. These 
two unlike ways of viewing the things of life, have 
needed less attention from educators than the like way, 
or common field, for the reason that the two unlike 
fields have been better cared for instinctively, — 
they have had more time in Nature's laboratory to 
unfold. 

Sex differentiation must have begun with or been 
inherent in the cell life, begun with the matter of 
nutrition, and is, with this, the oldest inheritance of 
the animal life. But even so, the functionings of these 
two fields are far from being automatic, far from being 
instinctively perfect in their action. These two differ- 
ing fields (though not so much so as the one field of 
their common mental activity) need educational atten- 
tion and correction for the following reason: The 
change we call progress so disturbs both the mental 
and the physical functionings as to require in these a 
continuous readjustment to meet the requirements of 
the change, the new conditions. 

Note the shock to the nerves occasioned by a change 
from a quiet country life to life in a noisy city. Things 
that disturb and break up the old life are on the in- 
crease everywhere. This will kill unless met with intel- 
ligent readjustment. 

For this reason we find that this adapting and re- 
adapting change that takes place in all life is, on the 
whole, an onward and upward one, — through " survival 
of the fittest." This holds emphatically true in sex 
differentiation. Most persons believe they understand 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 111 

the nature of this difference between the man and the 
woman, but its complete purpose, its beneficence, the 
possibilities which it holds in its unfoldment of a 
higher life of action and happiness for the man and the 
woman of the future, no one yet comprehends. 

The man and the woman seem to be the two halves 
of a whole ; there exists between them a natural mutual 
dependence, which develops a freedom of individual 
action in the proportion that they evolve understanding 
and honesty. They are intended to be co-operators, 
rather than competitors ; helpers, not antagonists. 

There is much co-operative value in the fact that the 
man and the woman are each equipped with a faculty 
of arriving at truth that the other does not possess ; 
this is not half understood and used ; neither cultivated, 
nor trusted. They discredit each other because they 
both make mistakes. 

Because they do not understand the co-operative 
value of the unlike faculties, they hold little mutual 
interest in the things of life, they do not pull together, 
their home is unsatisfactory, they can seldom enter into 
conversation without ending in a dispute, followed by 
a sulk. 

This is why we find the world filled with snares that 
catch and ruin men and with other " fool-catchers " for 
women that enslave both men and women. 

It is helpful to understand that life's expression is 
one of continuous change. The pathway of life is seen 
to be filled with a moving panorama of human beings 
feeling their way into things of greater use and beauty, 



112 HUMAN HARMONIES 

as well as of better conduct; all in conformity with 
a definite plan. In doing this they must, of course, 
be continously passing through much foolishness. 

Women, as a rule, are more conventional than men, 
they are apt to take the things of to-day as having 
more permanence than they actually possess, to take 
them more as a matter of course. That is, they tend 
to hold firmly to the established order of things, to 
side with the haves, the plutocratic ; they, as a group, 
like respectability and the easy road. Men hold things 
of convention in much lighter esteem, — they often 
laugh at, and sometimes treat them with ridicule and 
contempt. 

Observe the woman's fondness for weddings, and also 
her interest in funerals ! 

This tendency of the woman is explained by recog- 
nizing that things as they are, established forms and 
ceremonies, have been evolved largely through her in- 
fluence, for her protection and the permanence of social 
progress. 

She, for this reason, becomes a better observer of 
these external forms, she sees all the little conventional 
fly-specks of life and is shocked when one of these 
specks frescoes one of her little loves, but she often 
enjoys seeing these specks on the loves of her enemy. 
She likes clean things, but in any event she desires to 
appear well and will sometimes cover the soiled when 
the clean is not available. Observe her keen sense of 
smell. Though she, on the whole, is quite as honest as 
man, this intense desire for a conventionally correct 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 113 

appearance tends to make her dishonest in this par- 
ticular way. 

Hence, it follows, that a soiled character well con- 
cealed is, with some women, little worse than a soiled 
collar that can not be concealed. 

She influences building and holding, the construction 
of the home and the holding and the use of gained 
knowledge, customs and even superstitions. If she ever 
becomes an Anarchist or Iconoclast in her beliefs, it is 
because of her being a perverted and embittered case 
of too great social conservatism. She is not naturally 
so. Observe the Suffrage movement. In Woman's 
conservatism we see her the bulwark of the church. 

This social influence of the woman is static, it tends 
to bring about a stable equilibrium, to fasten upon the 
world a fixed type, to fossilize society by establishing 
dogmas in all of life's forms of expression. While 
she spurs the man to action she desires him to act along 
and within the lines of her feelings, and she does not 
feel comfortable without social approval; to please 
her the man must act within the lines of social sanc- 
tion. 

The woman is strong in emotions because she is strong 
in sensing, hence she is frequently the victim of her 
feelings because her feelings dominate her judgment. 
It follows, then, that she is apt to be led by sense in- 
toxication, carried off her feet by the harmony of color, 
of sound and of perfume. But so, too, do we find this 
same thing to hold true of emotional men. 

This explains why it is that all places, where scenery 



114 HUMAN HARMONIES 

and music are largely featured, and the atmosphere 
delicately perfumed, are much better patronized by 
women than by men ; men are largely drawn there by 
women. 

This also explains, further, how it is that certain 
religious orders hold their places of influence, through 
a pompous show, long after they should, in the interest 
of human progress, have died. It is in this way that 
political institutions keep in power through man's 
greed and prejudice-formed feeling, long after they 
have ceased to be socially useful. It is this tyranny 
of feeling, and of habit, that should be practically 
understood and broken up, that it may not submerge 
and prevent the action of reason. 

The sight of a diamond must give to a woman a 
much greater pleasure than it does to the average man. 
Man takes advantage of this sense enthrallment to 
please, to win, and to control the woman. However, 
we do find this love of ornament still lingering in the 
less evolved masculine type, but not among thinking 
men. 

As was said, in substance, above, the man and the 
woman seem to be the two halves of one complete in- 
strument of expression. There is that in the one that 
completes a certain constructive power of the other, 
that is not confined entirely to the offspring; a power 
which they learn to exercise well, but only through 
much conflict. 

In this adjustment to bring about working harmony 
between the two, the matter of learning to live together 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 115 

co-operatively and happily, the custom has been in 
the past for the woman to submit and accommodate 
herself to the likes and conveniences of the man ; often 
to smother her originality and preferences to do so. 
Even now she changes much more as a wife in the 
interest of harmony, than does the man, as a husband, 
for like purpose. 

For this submissiveness on the part of the woman 
there are two plain reasons: the first of the two is 
innate, — had its origin in an unknown cause, a tend- 
ency that began to manifest itself at the start of her 
differentiation into the female type and must have been 
set up as a necessity of co-operative harmony. The 
second is a product of evolution ; one of the two must 
fight the battles and exercise general control. This 
partially explains man's superior physical strength. 
One of the two must be ready at all times to grapple 
with the matter of subsistence. Woman could not do 
this and bear and care for her children. 

Their respective functions in life have been builded 
by the common but tacit consent of the two, evidently 
in the belief that the man, being the bread-winner, 
should have most to say about what the two should 
jointly do. Because, the winning of a subsistence has 
been and still is, with most couples, the matter of great- 
est importance. 

So we find that woman must have started out learn- 
ing to love the matter of her naturally assigned line 
of functioning. We find, as a rule, that the woman 
does not care to " boss," she is interested in her own 



116 HUMAN HARMONIES 

work and loves, her home and her children, with other 
things to which these naturally lead and with which 
they are naturally associated. The normal woman 
looks up to her mate with admiration in the propor- 
tion that he leads her and controls his affairs in a large 
and masterly way ; with domineering, theatrical, mascu- 
line vigor. 

She even prefers that he tyrannize over her rather 
than to be a weakling among men in the battle of life. 
In any event she wants him to win, she hopes, honestly ; 
but if the way of his winning begins to look a little 
shady, she prefers that it be without, on her part, a 
too close personal inspection of the moral details of his 
acts. 

Even now, in our more prosaic life of to-day, she 
still enjoys for herself very greatly the somewhat, 
figuratively speaking, poetical and dramatic seizure of 
old. She is better satisfied when carried off the stage 
of her maiden life by her hero in the midst of her 
kicks and screams. It is this that leaves behind it a 
soothing influence that sweetens all her after life. At 
all events she likes to feel that others believe she had 
but little to do with this matter of her seizure, and 
she prefers to feel it to be a fact that the man wanted 
her badly enough to steal her and bear her away into 
helpless captivity. 

But the fact of the matter is now in this present, 
less poetical everyday life of ours, of growing female 
independence, the woman often spends as much as, or 
even more time and energy in getting the man in- 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 117 

terested than the man takes in the capture after he 
once begins to move ; then he is very apt to think he 
did it all. 

Anyhow, this love of the woman for dramatic win- 
ning explains the young woman's admiration of the 
soldier and other men who wear brass buttons. The 
woman loves authority, hence the magic of brass 
buttons. 

It is this that gives to the feminine woman that 
almost beseeching appeal of submissiveness so entranc- 
ing to the average man, — a manner that some women 
learn to affect because it is so attractive to the man — 
particularly does she do this naturally and almost un- 
consciously before marriage. 

The man likes to feel that he has someone devoted to 
himself exclusively, someone whom he has won, mastered, 
subdued and trained, when perhaps he is the mastered 
and trained one. 

But the woman still feels this power of the natural 
order of old, and she feels very much humiliated when 
in love affairs she is obliged to make most of the 
advance moves under cover. In the cases where this has 
happened she never in after life feels for the man quite 
the same respect that she would have felt had he 
wooed her in true feudal, theatrical form ! He is not 
quite her ideal and she has stored up in her mind a 
certain resentment that crops out occasionally in their 
after life. 

Further, many women, if they desire to place all 
the blame on the man when anything goes wrong in 



118 HUMAN HARMONIES 

their married life, prefer to have a plausible excuse 
for doing so, and this they do not have when they 
have shown too much willingness to have the combina- 
tion take place. The woman desires to be able to say, 
" Well, you wanted me and chased me till you got me, 
now take the consequences ; you knew what I was." 
This in spite of the fact that every art known to her 
sex had been used in concealing that about herself 
which she did not wish to be known. 

There is still left in the woman's feelings much of 
that tribal instinct or heritage, of the time during a 
million years, or perhaps much longer, when she was 
seized and borne away into captivity as a chattel, a 
property, to hold, to master and to thrash. There 
is also left in the feelings of the man that to thus 
dominate is his natural right. But we must not for- 
get that we are evolving into a new life and the changes 
through which the man and the woman must pass 
(in leaving the old order and taking up with the new) 
must of necessity cause them much suffering. All 
new birth, of whatever kind it may be, involves 
suffering. 

The woman complains much of the inconstancy of 
the man, but his conduct is very evidently determined 
by the fact that Nature has placed upon him no such 
obligation of constancy as it has placed upon the 
woman. The woman serves the race with a larger 
mission. 

Down through the ages, both sexes have been as 
dishonest with each other as they could be. It is but 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 119 

gradually that they come to see what it is that pays 
best. 

The avowed ideal of the average woman is the 
Hebrew Joseph, a character whom, however, the 
natural woman inwardly holds as much in contempt as 
the man does the masculine woman. 

Why the woman begins immediately after marriage, 
and it is expected of her to begin immediately, to not 
only go to the home of the man, but to fit herself into 
the requirements of that home and its surroundings, 
to change more in the interest of harmony than the 
man, is not altogether an arbitrary matter — it is evolu- 
tionary, resident in the factors that unfold both their 
lives. It is the nature of the man's occupation that 
he is now, and always has been getting an experience 
of a greater variety and vigor than that allotted to the 
woman by her occupation. 

This lack of variety, lack of opportunity to study 
character and things from actual contact, this monot- 
ony, is what explains the extreme mental narrowness 
of the average faithful housewife ; it also explains that 
which we call her intuition, a power that is largely 
composed of rapid deductions. She has been obliged 
to be more of a Sherlock Holmes. She has had much 
less of the material of experience, but because she has 
used this material to better advantage in reaching con- 
clusions she not only has seemed to be, but is, a much 
better guesser. 

To-day, however, the woman is gaining rapidly in 
freedom of expression through the ever increasing op- 



120 HUMAN HARMONIES 

portunities offered her by advancing civilization to 
gain knowledge through experience outside of her own 
home and by reading. 

As her ideals expand she finds that radical change 
on her part in the interest of harmony, becomes less 
necessary. It will gradually come about that this 
adapting of the woman to the convenience of one man 
with little or no effort on his part to reciprocate, even 
to the extent of giving up her individuality, will gradu- 
ally grow less. 

She is gaining more independence of action. Hence, 
the man is finding himself obliged to gradually co- 
operate more and to command less. This brings out a 
tremendous protest from the man with old-time ideas 
in his head. 

But this unfolding change is in the direction of a 
higher life for both the man and the woman. Nature 
liberates all her changing forms through the evolution 
of a more pronounced individuality. 

We see it coming rapidly about, therefore, that if 
the man fails to become interested in the likes of his 
wife, and will not allow her to become interested in his 
likes, she will soon find that she has neighbors. 

Nature's tendency is to bring more freedom of action 
to all by means of compensating liberties rather than 
by the same liberties to each — this gives variety. 

As a rule, the woman will respond very quickly to 
any interest the man may show in the things she likes, 
or she will gladly follow him, go sympathetically into 
his own mental field where he will invite her or even 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 121 

allow her to come by her own invitation. In fact, she 
will make many and repeated attempts to become his 
close companion, but her efforts can in time be dis- 
couraged through rejection and the assumption of 
masculine wisdom. It hurts nearly all women to be 
treated as if they were children. 

Because woman is more plastic, and can, more 
quickly than the man, accommodate herself to the 
requirements of any change, we are apt to think 
that she should be more progressive. This, however, 
from all the evidence at hand, may well be doubted. 
She has a yielding ever-readiness to change, rather 
than a mastering power of change, hence her change 
for either the better or the worse depends upon the 
power to which she yields. Her mutability is not 
necessarily constructive. Woman has much origi- 
nality, but this originality is largely in the line of tact, 
adjustment — she has evolved in the line of the diplomat, 
in adaptability ; possibly for the reason that in most 
other original lines her action is socially discouraged. 

Woman will work boldly and even aggressively 
within sanctioned fields, or along lines that have been 
educationally mapped. But because the least conven- 
tional frown acts upon her like a frost, she has culti- 
vated the suppression of all ideas that come to her in 
which she can find no sympathy, and for which she can 
find no human authority already established. She is 
made afraid of much of herself, because of this con- 
ventional frown. 

The woman sets great store by the opinion of others, 



122 HUMAN HARMONIES 

and she dislikes to combat these for the reason that 
she desires to be loved, and withers away without love. 
It therefore follows that she, much more than the man, 
is hurt by criticism. 

There is plenty of evidence to show that, for a benefi- 
cent purpose, the evolution of the female of all species 
began taking place at the negative pole of life and man 
at the positive pole of life. So we find that in the case 
of the woman, all the experiences of her life, while pass- 
ing through the grosser phase of human unfoldment, 
tend to keep this original impetus intact. This tendency 
is implanted in the nature of her life's function- 
ings that determines her occupations and forms her 
loves. 

She has, therefore, come to be more of a natural 
show window than an aggressive salesman, her function 
in life is more to attract than to invade, her originality 
lies more in the line of art than of invention, as a 
grouper of the old rather than a builder of the new, 
an educator rather than an originator, a teacher of 
old words rather than a coiner of new ones. If she 
finds a thing in the dictionary it must be right. It 
is no easy matter to convince her that errors exist, 
a word and its definition must be right because it is in 
the dictionary, she swears by her authorities. She is 
coercively strong in that power of publicity which 
she would indignantly deny; to secure the means for 
this is frequently the cause of her downfall. 

There is no question about there being a difference 
in the manner of mental as well as physical expression 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 123 

that is due to sex, in art, in literature, in esthetics, in 
morals, in thinking, in fact in almost everything. 

This should be understood and recognized as a dif- 
ference of natural co-operative beneficence, a difference 
of ever greater enjoyment in the proportion that it is 
assisted by intelligent culture. This should be recog- 
nized culturally, together with that larger field of in- 
terest in which the two function alike. 

The natural difference between the male and female 
modes of life's expression tends to differentiate them 
independently and co-operatively rather than competi- 
tively. There difference is not the one between great 
and small, — there are different kinds of greatness, a 
great railroad builder, in this life, is not apt to be a 
great poet. 

It is not likely that the woman's greatness will ever 
be the positive, deciding factor, though she may, in a 
negative way, be the initiator of the pair, she can make 
suggestions ; it is evident that she is placed at the 
wrong pole of life — as the decisive factor in life's build- 
ing, she is not a marked success. 

It seems to be in the woman's nature to resent even 
the insinuation that she initiates even when she does ; 
tell her that she is chasing a man and see what will 
happen. Woman has her own line of greatness at 
her own pole of life. 

It is already sufficiently well known and established 
that the woman's mode of operation is to initiate by 
attraction in her own naturally assigned field of opera- 
tion. The man merely does what the woman has 



124 HUMAN HARMONIES 

planned that he should do when he rushes dramatically 
in and with words climaxes the entire maneuver. He 
is thought to be below the line of masculine normal 
and is held very much in contempt when he fails to 
respond. 

Woman often conquers when she submits and man 
often submits when he thinks he conquers. Both men 
and women have always voted, they have always con- 
quered and have always ruled, and both do this in an 
exact proportion to their desires, their self-control, 
their intelligence, and their will. But their mode of 
operation is different. 

A woman knows better than a man that there is often 
more victory to be gained from retreat than from pur- 
suit, more from withdrawing her claims than from the 
insistence of their payment, more from love than from 
commands. As a rule man has less emotional feeling 
but better judgment to balance the emotions of the 
woman and keep her from running wild. 

If woman had both these powers, the one of initiation 
in most things of life, and accommodation to meet the 
requirements of change, there never could be any work- 
ing harmony between the man and the woman. 

It is because of this power of adaptation in the 
woman, her alertness to meet conventional requirements 
rather than to set up new things and mold the public 
to fit these new things, that she becomes the victim of 
the fashion makers. Fashions, as a rule, originate 
with men. 

In this rapidly moving panorama of fashion-change 



TYPE FEATURES OF SEX 125 

the woman defines her likes as good taste and her dis- 
likes as vulgarity. But analysis of this matter shows 
that what she likes, if measured by a standard of 
natural beauty, of fitness, would often prove to be 
anything but in good taste. She has been caught and 
enthralled through her senses, by her desire to attract, 
she becomes the victim of advertising fashion exploiters, 
worked by suggestion. So she believes, because she 
feels, while the spell is on, a thing to be in good taste, 
which is, as a matter of fact, often no more than a 
bizarre and degenerate form, a fashion cartoon of true 
art and fitness, a thing that will look to the same 
woman, ridiculous, when the passing of the fashion has 
dispelled the illusion. 

Nature must always furnish the standard for good 
taste, the model for true beauty and artistic excellence. 
Human creations are not artistic when the would-be 
artist departs from the measure of natural law. 

The higher unfoldment of progress marches ever in 
the direction of art conformed to utility, rather than 
utility made to conform to art. 

Nothing can remain long in use without the consent 
of natural fitness; things, other than the fittest, are 
always ground up in the mills of the gods or old 
Father Time, and the material of which they are com- 
posed reshaped into things better fitted to serve human 
ends. And this holds true of hats, of coats, of build- 
ings, of streets, of laws, of courts, of governments and 
of religions. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Intuition and Reason 

THERE always has been and there still is, con- 
siderable contention over the question as to 
which is the better way to arrive at truth: by 
the way of reason or by intuition. But it is very 
evident that neither reason nor intuition can be ac- 
cepted as the final court of appeal, — they often both 
lead to mistakes — they are both human functions and 
are both fallible. 

This is well; because, in this rivalry between the 
man and the woman over these two methods of mental 
operation, these failures tend to so keep down the con- 
ceit of both parties as to enable them, by lying con- 
siderably to each other, to live with more or less com- 
fort under the same roof. 

However, of the two, reason makes fewer mistakes 
in reaching its conclusions, it takes more steps and 
takes these steps more deliberately, it weighs evidence 
with greater care and obtains better practical results 
than intuition so far as intuition is yet unfolded. But 
they work well together and are both needed factors in 
the scheme of unfolding life. 

The method used by intuition is the one of jumping 
at conclusions, that is, intuition may know a few things 
directly, just "because," anyhow, it is quite evident 
126 



INTUITION AND REASON 127 

that intuition in some way takes short cuts, but we 
have very good reason to believe that it reaches its 
conclusions by successive steps of mentation, using 
material means, in much the same way as reason, with 
the exception that these steps are more concealed. 
The reason for their being hidden is that the intuitive 
is not a type of mind sufficiently analytical to trace 
the rapid steps of the process verbally. In fact, the 
reason may partly be that " because " is not only a 
short cut to settlements, but serves the further purpose 
as a mysteriously operating process. Intuition seems 
to move from particulars to generals, instead of from 
generals to particulars, and the mind takes its steps 
so quickly and automatically that no memory is pre- 
served of the process, so when it reaches its wholesale 
conclusion, makes its sweeping generalization, it has 
lost sight of the particular from which it started. 
It fails to explain how it arrived. Intuition is unable 
to make classification that will stand the test of science, 
though it often reaches the truth in individual cases. 

Mr. Blank is a rascal, hence his entire family of 
twelve children are rascals ; in fact, all persons by 
the name of Blank are rascals. 

This sweeping classification from insufficient data, 
often the arrangement of all of any given group under 
one head, made from a knowledge of the characteristics 
of one only, and without considering whether the units 
have or have not any natural relation, is quite a com- 
mon fault to be found with men as well as women. 
These mistake the species for the genera, — they judge 



128 HUMAN HARMONIES 

of all by the little that they know, for the reason that 
they can not understand how little they know as com- 
pared with what there is to be known. 

But again referring to the woman, it is the nature 
of the woman to conceal the source of her information, 
even when she knows the particular item with which 
she started, — she likes to wield her power of being an 
enigma to the man, without, if possible, telling a direct 
lie. So when pressed to tell how she came to reach 
her conclusions she says " because," and that settles it. 

In any given case the thing from which she drew her 
conclusion may have been a mere glance of the eye; 
as a rule, the perceptive faculties of woman are much 
keener than those of man, she sees little things that 
speak to her meaningly, things that entirely escape 
the man. This holds particularly true in matters per- 
taining to sex and character. For her data of estimate 
a woman is always watching the external expression 
of the man with whom she associates, and in particular 
does she read his character more or less correctly by 
the way he is clothed ; also, his feelings in the story told 
by his facial expression, while he is most often looking 
straight ahead into vacancy, unconscious of her 
subtlety. 

Her power in this direction is a matter of age-long 
cultivation and inheritance, the strength on which 
she has relied rather than on physical strength, — it is 
the weapon of defense and offense which she often 
wields ; she has a character-seeing consciousness, the 
result of detail observation, a consciousness which the 



INTUITION AND REASON 129 

man has not yet evolved. But this is more a matter 
of induction than of intuition, and she therefore often 
makes great mistakes, through using it to draw hasty 
conclusions. 

The product of both reason and of intuition should 
be carefully weighed because the factors of operation 
by which results are obtained, are very complex; 
besides, they are often mixed with many impurities 
such as jealousy, vanity and dishonesty. These fre- 
quently set up a rapid action of the imagination result- 
ing in a tremendously vitiated product. 

It may not be amiss to here suggest to the man who 
has a wife filled with this untaught wisdom and 
prophecy, if it becomes a little troublesome as well as 
useful, to make a note of some of her prophecies over 
her signature so that she can not forget what her pre- 
dictions were, in any given case, when she has failed, 
as she often does, and so far forgotten as to say " I 
told you so." 

In its method of working to reach accurate conclu- 
sions and to make discoveries, reason works by the 
safer method of deduction, the process of working from 
generals to particulars, after the law has been discov- 
ered by the slow experimental process of science, em- 
pirically. 

This, however, is the way that few men or women 
follow in practice; the great majority jump at con j 
elusions, reason from particulars to generals. This 
careless and unfair method leads to many complications 
in human affairs. 



130 HUMAN HARMONIES 

If you wish to study human beings, let them talk 
while you think and question. If you have in this way 
studied the psychology of the woman, you have learned 
that the working of her mind is almost entirely empiri- 
cal, — as a rule, she is neither scientific nor philosophical. 
In matters of conversation, therefore, she is interested 
only so far as the subject is social — as it pertains to 
men, women and life, — is biological so far as it leads 
directly to sex relations. This one attitude of her 
mind has become so firmly fixed by inheritance, by the 
evolution of her life, that it is the one mission that 
holds in her feelings a coercive need ; all other matters 
of life are mere attachments, her platonic loves are. 
unconsciously to her, sex attachments and ornaments. 

So in matters of guessing, when sex is concerned, 
in social matters, guessing with but few facts, it must be 
confessed that woman surpasses man. She is, here, a 
better hypothesis-builder, a better theorist; for the 
simple reason that her keen interest in this field has 
enabled her to gather a larger fund of its general knowl- 
edge, here in this field her mind works quickly and 
easily, here she has mental plasticity. 

We find that men of wide knowledge do much the 
same thing; in science and philosophy they are able 
to reason and reach results much more quickly and 
accurately and make a much less number of mistakes, 
than men with narrow and laborious minds, than men 
with few of the pictures of either words or things in 
their minds with which to work. 



CHAPTER XVII 

From Noisy Impotence to Silent Power 

THE advance of the ideal always stimulates that 
action which breaks up the old order and 
pioneers the way to better things. The world 
of to-day is greatly in need of a higher average ideal. 
The onward move of the ideal works out reform through 
relaxation of social rigidity. 

Can you, who have had your eyes but half open dur- 
ing the past few years, doubt that the ideals of women 
are moving forward much faster than the ideals of 
men? And there is a very plain reason; women read 
more, — and this is bound to make them think more. 
Women are much more alive to the value of education 
than men. And have we not more than a half reason 
to suspect that this masculine blindness to the improve- 
ment that is taking place among women, was set up 
far back in the natural law, that woman might at about 
this time gain and have her reign of ascendency or even 
tyranny, as man has had his reign of physical ascen- 
dency and tyranny in the past ages? If in times 
past, she has been able to perform much more than 
the household drudgery with her babe strapped to 
her back, who shall say that without this burden she 
may not be able to perform a part of the drudgery 
131 



132 HUMAN HARMONIES 

of state and nation? Anyhow, we know this: Man, in 
the past, has been the deciding factor, but because he 
has been dishonest in the discharge of his function — 
because he has grafted — has refused to do as well as he 
knows — has refused to make use of the educational 
privilege of that which has been learned, who can say 
what penalty he owes and must pay to the woman and 
to the nation? 

Woman tends more, when a thing has been learned 
and recorded, to put it into practice ; that is, she is 
more conventional, — takes more to authority — sanc- 
tioned lines of education, and is naturally more con- 
scientious. For this reason, possibly because she has 
suffered most, just here at this historical juncture, 
she is stepping in to compel the masculine delinquent 
to put into practice that which he has long known, but 
refused to use. 

In the matter of material life and living there is 
taking place a tremendous growth of human ideals 
which the dishonest man-made laws are preventing the 
majority from realizing. It is this denial that makes 
it increasingly difficult for the man to meet the expec- 
tations of the woman in the matter of support; it is 
this denial that accounts for much of the growing desire 
of both men and women for independent action ; and it 
is this same thing that is, to a large extent, responsible 
for the increase of spinsters and bachelors, as well as 
an increasing number of divorces to secure the same 
end. 

The great distance between the ideal which each holds 



NOISY IMPOTENCE TO SILENT POWER 133 

in mind and that which they are able to realize, pro- 
duces too great a torture in their partnership-action 
for endurance. This explains the increase of that which 
is practically polygamy among the coarse and vulgar 
rich; it explains the disgrace to civilization of our 
present hotel practices — this that holds true everywhere. 

Can you wonder at the increasing desire on the part 
of the awakened woman to secure the right of suffrage, 
in order that she may reform the laws that are now 
so strongly tending to reduce all her sex to the level 
of the common woman of the street, — to that of the 
hotel convenience, — to the rich man's concubine, — and 
that also denies to thousands of them the right of 
legitimate motherhood and to thousands of men the 
right to a wife? Do you wonder that the woman de- 
sires to take a hand in freeing herself from such a 
degenerate, and still degenerating condition? Do you 
deny that it is her duty to do so? 

An Englishman said to me very recently : " The best 
women of England do not want the right to vote." 
This I emphatically deny. The women of England that 
are now fighting for their rights, are made of the same 
stuff that made England all that she now is, — such as 
these have been the mothers of the men who have made 
England, the unconquerable. And by means of a large 
percentage of decadence, England must pay for all 
this denial of rights to her women. The world needs 
to be disentangled from the meshes of this tendency 
toward universal prostitution, a large part of which 
it has already realized. Do you think that woman is 



134 HUMAN HARMONIES 

not going to take part in this work of reform? If 
you do you are mistaken. The Suffragette has come 
to stay, and she will prove to be our salvation ; she will 
save our civilization, if it can be saved. There is a 
power behind the Suffragette that can not be so easily 
imprisoned as this instrument we call the " Suffra- 
gette," and mention in such disdainful terms. There is 
no one feature of our present-day degeneracy that shows 
more plainly than this one which renders women slaves 
to the passion of the more vulgar types of rich men, — 
several women secretly kept by one man. This is neither 
what the woman wants nor what the man needs. The 
woman wants respectability, culture, expression of the 
beautiful in art, refinement and intelligence, a home 
with one man and children, with some assurance that 
these children will be supported and educated. She 
wants to live. It is this that will prevent race suicide. 

But under the existing conditions of injustice and 
ignorance, the cause of which neither understands, 
men and women are altogether too apt to enslave each 
other with petty exactions, to try to own each other; 
each feels that the other can not be trusted; they ab- 
sorb dishonesty from their surroundings — it is conta- 
gious ; they usually try to get the better of each other, 
not knowing that in nearly all things jealousies and 
espionage will aggravate instead of helping the matter. 

Men and women must learn to realize the power of 
education to create a higher life; to see that each 
should be and is destined to become to the other an 
instrument of educational use ; that they are in the crude 



NOISY IMPOTENCE TO SILENT POWER 135 

state and may in the adjusting obtain great growth. 
This result of the conflicts of life, though not so tan- 
gible as some of the more material things, is, after all, 
the thing of real value. 

Everything has its day, its rise, its use ; its decline and 
fall, or rather passes out of old forms and emerges 
in new. 

So it is with the old forms of education found in 
fighting; this has served a very admirable purpose, — 
it is to some extent still serving, but fighting energy is 
rapidly passing into new and less noisy forms of prog- 
ress, forms having greater power. Fighting is icono- 
clastic, — destructive rather than constructive; it stirs 
life into greater action and removes old and fixed forms 
from the pathway of progress ; it is conducted along 
lines of muscle, brag and passion; but the moment 
its mission is clearly seen to be enlightenment it will 
cease to serve, and here is where the day of just laws 
and the woman begins, and the day of mere muscle 
and brag ends. Education is the short, silent, easy 
and inexpensive way to the cessation of hostilities and 
the solution of problems. Of course, figuratively speak- 
ing, the ocean of life has not all been charted, but 
enough of it has been to enable us to avoid a great 
many dangers where the information can become prac- 
tically operative by finding its way into human heads. 

Empirical and theoretical education, education prop- 
erly so-called, is of very recent date when compared with 
the time that human beings have been learning by expe- 
rience alone, also with the time it has taken to evolve 



136 HUMAN HARMONIES 

the physical and mental structure of the race. In fact, 
education, through the instrumentality of the printed 
page, is so modern that the world has not yet learned 
to make more than a very limited use of it. 

The majority have no appreciative interest in the 
matter of education, — they fail to see its practical 
importance. What the average man can do to keep his 
independence or to earn a subsistence, is but little; he 
is not even a good handy-man ; he has had but a crude 
and narrow experience. The majority of such men are 
still prejudiced in favor of ignorance, as can be seen 
in many ways, and in particular by the way they 
treat the school-taught man who comes among them 
to put his book information into practice. No trifling 
mistake made by the young man fresh from school, is 
allowed to go unchallenged. He is laughed at and 
often ridiculed. 

Of course, this sneer of the unschooled man, at what 
he calls " book learnin'," is in part due to jealousy, 
largely due to a lack of appreciative understanding of 
the function of theory. 

In fact, the part that the idea plays in the world, 
is too intangible for the majority to understand. They 
begin to flock around and to applaud when the idea 
has been made tangible, embodied in something that 
can be sensed. The giver of ideas is never discovered 
by the many. Uninformed persons always fail to see 
that every conscious act is preceded by an idea, by a 
theory; it must be or the act could not be performed. 
Hence, the importance of the acquisition of ideas. The 



NOISY IMPOTENCE TO SILENT POWER 137 

art of application comes with practice and follows the 
plan of application, skill comes with practice, practice 
makes in the direction of perfection. The well-schooled 
man, or the man self-taught from books, if he has not 
become fixed in prejudice, orthodox ed by his mediums of 
information, made mentally unchangeable, soon out- 
strips the man who learns by experience only. 

This purposeful unfolding of the natural human 
powers by means of what we call education is the only 
short way to knowledge ; in this way the student equips 
himself with that which has been booked by all those 
who have passed over the fields in which he desires to 
become efficiently active. 

No individual can cover more than a small field in 
life with his own unaided experiences. Efficiency 
gained by experience alone, is not only slow, and the 
way narrow, but the journey is expensive and the effort 
often painful. This need not be if the individual will 
first obtain for himself the theory outlined by the 
experiences of others preceding him. 

The difference between practice without theory and 
the practice that follows theory, is really the difference 
between savagery and civilization. 

The student should be taught that little of what we 
know is the final word, but it is so good as to be of 
infinite help in our practical life. Also, the best way 
to become an original investigator is to first learn all 
we can from those who have gone before and there will 
then be plenty of room left, if we can find the time, for 
experiment in unexplored fields. 



138 HUMAN HARMONIES 

Notwithstanding the fact that we know these things 
theoretically, we are not yet able to put them into 
practice because of our monopoly-robbed and education- 
starved system. 



CHAPTER XVni 

The Ornamental Woman and Economics 

WHERE there is life there is sure to be either 
action or the possibility of arousing action. 
Life is either active or latent ; herein we seek 
for the evidences of life. 

We are all dead to that concerning which we do not 
feel and of which we know nothing, — dead to that of 
which we are unconscious. 

We know of no better way to account for organic 
life than by evolution ; the territory of consciousness is 
the product of experience, memory, and since the begin- 
ning of education this consciousness has been several 
times doubled. The holding of, and ever enlarging 
upon life's interests is the possibility of art, of cultiva- 
tion. In this way life can be kept ever moving from 
lower to higher planes of consciousness. 

This increase of consciousness must be brought about 
largely by seeking and using variety, finding something 
new. Constructive change awakens ; monotony of life 
kills. Old age is more the effect of the loss of old 
interests, without the acquisition of new interests, than 
the cause of this loss. 

Interest in a thing compels the functioning of the 
organ that enables us to enjoy it; this forces con- 
139 



140 HUMAN HARMONIES 

tinuous repair, keeps up a keen preparedness for func- 
tioning and a certain increase of the capacity to 
enjoy. 

Human differences, then, should not be looked upon 
as matters to quarrel over, but as parts of this educa- 
tional variety, as opportunities for mutual instruction. 

Each of us has been delegated two parts to play in 
this great drama of life, one part as teacher and the 
other as learner; the first we should learn to practice 
without dogmatic assumption ; and the second we should 
hold tentatively but thoughtfully and patiently. 

There are comparatively few in this life who succeed 
in doing much or in knowing much, for the reason that 
but few ever learn to make use of their spare time and 
means and opportunities. 

In the use of these the great majority are prodigal. 
Particularly is it true that too many young married 
women are led into mischief by having too much idle 
time on their hands ; they are without any plan to use 
this surplus in pursuit of self-improvement by reading 
or by some useful home-making occupation. 

This belief in the natural right of the woman to live 
in idleness, is an imported disease and had its origin 
in the foreign snob with more money than brains. With 
this foolishness many a woman and her worshiping 
simpleton of a husband are inoculated. They evidently 
do not know that neither man nor woman can lead a 
safe, a comfortable and a wholesome life without some 
regular occupation. 

We know that there is to-day a very strong sentiment 



ORNAMENTAL WOMAN AND ECONOMICS 141 

in favor of the idle woman, the ornamental woman, 
this product of suggestion. This woman belongs to a 
large class that has come into existence through a 
desire of badly taught women in many walks of life 
to ape the women of the idle rich, — society women. So 
that there are now many indolent women, the wives of 
men having but a small business income or working for 
moderate wages. 

So much do some brainless women take it as their 
right to do nothing, backed by a strong public senti- 
ment, that they become immediately angry with the 
person who happens to hint at their duty to be useful 
to themselves, their husbands, or the world. 

This sentiment has come to be a sort of fashion, that 
lazy and vain women do not like to see pass away, — it 
serves their feelings too well. 

Snobbery, like grafting, tip-taking and charity, is a 
disease. 

But in the growth of this sentiment the man is much 
more to be blamed than the woman. The environment of 
the woman is shaped by the man, and naturally, in the 
interest of harmony, she accommodates herself to the 
requirements of this environment; she is more plastic, 
fluid, mutable, amenable to change, yields more readily 
to educational influences than man. Her attempts to 
change this foolish man-made product are frowned upon 
even when she would greatly improve it, so that, as 
in the right to the ballot, the woman must always make 
her breaks for freedom as one of a body. The unen- 
lightened man is here as blind, egotistical, selfish, jeal- 



142 HUMAN HARMONIES 

ous and brutal as he was two or three thousand years 
ago, and the female vampire and other perverts of the 
system are parts of his punishment. All suppression of 
human rights has a penalty and the payment can not 
be escaped. 



CHAPTER XIX 

Home Inharmony, Divorce and Economics 

IT is a matter of common knowledge that in the 
married life, advancing civilization has increased 
rather than decreased the inharmony between the 
man and the woman. There are more quarrels and 
divorces than ever before, in the history of the world. 
Why? 

Most persons know that the blame for their failure 
is not all to be found in themselves ; there is something 
wrong, but few know what. The majority keep too 
near the surface in assigning the cause, making no real 
exhaustive effort to know the truth. They can see 
that the power of the labor-saving machine to produce 
the things that everybody wants is continuously and 
enormously on the increase, but they fail to see why, 
with all this improvement, comparatively few are able 
to supply all their needs. 

The majority fail to see why they do not obtain more 
of the products of their labor and of the machine, for 
the reason that they fail to see the cause of this unfair 
distribution; the removal of the cause is simple, when 
once seen. They know that if the millions of money 
stored in bank vaults and kept out of use, were in cir- 
culation, times would be good. 
143 



144 HUMAN HARMONIES 

They can see thousands of needy men and women 
passing and re-passing stores and warehouses filled to 
overflowing, and their owners failing because they can 
not sell; they can see that men can not exchange their 
labor for the means with which to buy. They can see 
idle hands, idle land, idle machinery and idle money, 
also men, women and children starving because these 
can not be set in motion and their products fairly dis- 
tributed. 

They can, if they will, see real estate ever increas- 
ing in value, particularly city lands, and accompanied 
by a corresponding increase of rents to pay interest 
on the increasing land values ; and what follows ? The 
price of all kinds of merchandise must go up to pay 
the increasing rent. 

Few are able to see that this ever increasing value 
of land is due to increase of population and to the 
increase of the power of the labor-saving machine to 
produce — in fact, to everything that makes a com- 
munity a better place in which to live; land takes to 
itself all the value of improvements and charges it up 
in rents. 

It is this that makes the cost of living an ever increas- 
ing one and throws men out of work. There are com- 
paratively few, however, who can find the cause from a 
given effect. Hence, they are unable to see that every 
improvement and every individual added to the popula- 
tion raises the price of land and of rent, and that it is 
the consumer, the purchaser of goods, who, by means 
of higher prices, pays all of this rent. The rent thus 



INHARMONY, DIVORCE, ECONOMICS 145 

paid to a landlord, the tenant, as one of many, has 
created, — the landlord has no more to do with making 
this value than the tenant. 

The labor-saving machine should produce more for 
all, and it does, but all do not get it. Instead, the 
machine, by means of private property in the land, is 
made to produce for the few only, by raising the price 
of land, of rents and of the things sold on the markets. 

What we are here finding fault with is the fact that 
the majority will not take the trouble to inform them- 
selves ; they are therefore wholly unable to see the 
plainly visible steps in the working of a system that 
withholds from them the benefits of all progress ; a sys- 
tem that prevents them from obtaining their natural 
share of the products of the labor-saving machine. 

It is this one great fact of human laziness that makes 
slaves of us all ; this explains all manner of disturbance, 
inharmony and fights. 

There is nothing plainer in this whole scheme of 
progress than Nature's effort to make us act thought- 
fully. And in this matter of the things of use and of 
need, made by the machine in great abundance for all, 
but stored out of reach and rotting all around us, do 
we find a case particularly to the point to prove this. 
We, the majority, must remain without all this till such 
time as we have thought out how to construct the social 
machinery for the honest and automatic distribution 
of these things of use. For the few to see the cause 
will not solve the problem; the majority must not only 
see but they must also act. 



146 HUMAN HARMONIES 

It is in the lack of these necessities of life, and other 
things, that all of us should have for our daily enjoy- 
ment, that we find a large part of the explanation of 
the cause of this increasing turmoil in the married life. 
And this turmoil will continue to increase and it should 
continue to increase ; race suicide should increase ; in 
fact, every vice and every crime in the catalogue should 
and will increase till the majority are in this way suffici- 
ently aroused, by suffering, to set about finding and 
applying this simple remedy that lies so directly before 
the eyes of every human being, and can be plainly seen 
with the eyes open. 

As a result of this unfair system, so easily remedied, 
we see thousands of women desiring thousands of things 
that the more prosperous of their rent-collecting neigh- 
bors have, but which they, through the community, can 
not have, because they have no rents to collect. They 
fail to see that in justice this value belongs to the com- 
munity, that in this way all should collect the ground 
rents they make instead of allowing it to be collected 
by a few. These women, like their husbands, do not 
think ; they do not have stored in the laboratory of 
their brains the material that enables them to think 
along this line of the making and distribution of the 
things which they want and need for use. 

They, by their inability to see the cause of their 
slavery and drudgery, place too much blame on the 
particular man, the husband on whom they depend to 
supply their needs. Nor can the husband who knows 
no more than his wife, explain to her why he is unable 



INHARMONY, DIVORCE, ECONOMICS 147 

to meet her expectations, and he, in so far as he has 
failed to cultivate efficiency of hand and brain, can be 
blamed. In the matter of home-making, there are more 
men than women who are good for but little, and one 
reason for this is that the home supply which the man 
is supposed to furnish is affected more directly by bad 
economic conditions than is that part presided over by 
the woman. The fact is, our lives are all very depen- 
dent upon that over which we, as individuals, have but 
little control, — our social and economic conditions. It 
is the failure of the majority to understand economics 
that causes nearly all poverty, crime and domestic 
turmoil, and until some radical change takes place the 
White Slave trade will not only persist but will increase ; 
the only remedy is to remove the cause. 



CHAPTER XX 

Why Sane and Honest Men Do Not Marry 

UNDER present conditions of economic and social 
unfairness to the individual, we find marriage 
decreasing among thinking men and women. 

The informed person can see how very difficult it is 
for the young man to start in life, with nothing, as the 
average man must, and win and hold by honest business 
methods a comfortable independence for himself and 
wife. 

Handicapped with a family, it is exceedingly difficult 
for this average man to succeed as his wife expects 
him to succeed. If he fails, he is censured not only by 
his wife and his friends, but by his enemies also. The 
family man of to-day, with but little means, is an abso- 
lute slave. 

So difficult is it for the wage-worker to secure steady 
employment at wages with which he can meet the ex- 
pense of his own and his wife's growing love of luxury, 
and the increasing cost of the entire panoramic equip- 
ment of the family, that the sane man knows better 
than to marry, he is too wise to so tie himself as to be 
obliged to bid good-bye to every form of independent 
action for life. The thinking man finds himself denied 
148 



WHY SOME MEN DO NOT MARRY 149 

that to which Nature entitles him, by the injustice of 
social conditions. 

However, to see how it is that the cost of living is 
becoming ever greater, is a simple matter, because there 
is abundance of available information on the subject. 

Men and women are directly the slaves of their own 
lack of information and indirectly the slaves of their 
own economic system ; it is this that makes of woman a 
conventional slave and every step she takes out of this 
slavery one of bitter fight and martyrdom. 

All of these fool-catcher institutions by which we are 
surrounded, coerced and betrayed, are products of this 
dishonest, man-made monopoly system ; that almost com- 
pels every business man to build up his business on the 
high price, graft plan of operation, in order to pay 
to a landlord the rent he and his neighbors have 
made. 

The average woman has not tried to think much, 
because it has not paid her very well to think. So we 
find Mrs. Jones, whose husband is able to secure for her 
but a bare living, looking upon Mr. Smith, who is 
worth half a million dollars, as a man very superior to 
her Mr. Jones. Could she know the whole truth con- 
cerning the business morals of the two men, she might 
reverse her opinion. 

In trying to please, to protect and to meet the expec- 
tations of those they love, men are tempted, nay, almost 
coerced by a system that denies justice, to do things 
for which they can find no moral sanction, — things which 
they could easily and morally accomplish, were they 



150 HUMAN HARMONIES 

living under an honest system of production and dis- 
tribution. 

In order to make the rents that they must pay to the 
landlord, hotels, restaurants, theaters, department-stores, 
dry-goods and grocery stores, doctors, lawyers — in fact, 
every business and every profession are equipped with a 
certain amount of fake ; the endeavor is to exaggerate 
their own value, by fooling their customers with impres- 
sions, — traps set to catch the gullible. 

Nearly all places of business are fitted up to take 
advantage of persons who are controlled by their feel- 
ings rather than by reason, traps set up through 
glamor, suggestion and sentimentality, to coerce the man 
through the feelings of the woman — if he refuses to 
be a victim he lacks courtesy; honesty becomes old- 
fashioned. 

To such an extent has this art of working gullible 
men through the emotions of the woman, by psychologi- 
cal exploiters in every department of life, been spread, 
that over the average man it has become positively 
irresistible. If he refuses to be a victim, he becomes 
a brute in the public eye of sentimental empty-headed- 
ness. 

A woman worked to a frenzy by modern methods of 
reaching her husband's pocketbook, through her feel- 
ings, to pay somebody's rent would prefer to be ten 
times the fool-caught, and compelled to enrich the land- 
lord, rather than to be once the dowdy that would save 
her husband many days of toil and herself much misery. 

It is the glitter of this machine-made wealth of things, 



WHY SOME MEN DO NOT MARRY 151 

monopolized and vulgarly displayed by comparatively 
few, that turns the head of the majority with envy, 
jealousy and hatred, and works them to a finish, 
instead of, as it should, inspire them to seek the knowl- 
edge that would compel justice to be done. 

Thinking people know that the wages of neither the 
average young man nor of the average young woman 
are sufficient to even half clothe, as she would like to be 
clothed, the average unthinking, fad-caught, theatre- 
crazed, restaurant-eating, home-hating woman of to- 
day. 

Nor is this intended to be a condemning criticism, 
except of those who refuse to learn anything. 

In the way of having everything they need, all men 
and women should be rich, and the only reason that they 
are not, is because they do not yet know enough. The 
young woman who marries the poor man as a last resort, 
only because she has failed to attract and hold the rich 
man for whom she was educated, starts out in life with 
a mild protest, if not a stronger feeling against her 
fate. This tends to exaggerate in her mind all the 
little deficiencies of her struggling husband. 

She not only fails to take an interest in, to sympa- 
thize with, and encourage him in his efforts to win 
success ; but she, under such circumstances, is very apt 
to feel toward him a direct antagonism. 

What must inevitably happen in these cases of which 
there are a great many? Can we wonder at the increas- 
ing number of divorces? That economy which must 
be practiced at the start of life, if success is ever to be 



152 HUMAN HARMONIES 

won, is out of the question. This prodigal education, 
this love of luxury without the means to gratify the 
feeling, is fatal to honest success. 

As a rule, the woman so educated is a poor judge of 
quality, she thinks if an article has a high price attached 
to it, it must have merit to correspond; if an article 
comes high it must be good. 

It follows as a sequence of her false measure of 
value, that unless the things which her husband pur- 
chases for her meet with this price requirement, she 
feels hurt, and sometimes, insulted. 

She likes to show off among her friends with big 
prices, whether the high-priced articles are, or are not, 
good for anything. 

The twenty-five-cent meal for which the customer is 
often made, in many of these fool-catcher places, to 
pay from one dollar to -five dollars would rest perfectly 
on the stomach of such a woman; while, if the same 
meal had been secured at its real value, it would have 
given her ptomaine poisoning or resulted in a case of 
chronic dyspepsia. A book bought in a second-hand 
store would give such a person nervous prostration. 

Why do nearly all persons erase the price marks 
from their holiday gifts? Though few would own it, 
it originated in a desire to conceal the truth of a cheap 
price — it is the evolution of a lie into a custom of 
politeness ; and as a matter of fact, is a vulgar practice 
instead of the reverse. 

What have we, then, as an inevitable sequence to this 
false condition of things in the way of family making? 



WHY SOME MEN DO NOT MARRY 153 

Simple, comfortable life is impossible among such sim- 
pletons. The evil effects on the average mind are too 
numerous to mention. 

The thrifty and sane young man, the young man who 
is obliged to start in life with nothing, and has brains 
enough to determine him to secure an independence with 
honest effort, refuses to marry. In fact, if he belongs 
to that large company who are first obliged to educate 
themselves or go without education, he has no time left 
to marry and do justice to himself, his wife and his 
offspring. 

Men who marry, then, are those who have been edu- 
cated and given a start by parents or someone else. 
Though this is seldom fully appreciated, it leads 
the young man to believe that he can marry with 
safety. This is one of the marrying classes, but there 
is another: There is always with us a great marrying 
army of the thoughtless, gambling, irresponsible, prodi- 
gal type ; men and women, who being led almost entirely 
by their feelings, have too little brains to think of the 
consequences of their undertakings ; they are foolhardy 
rather than courageous. A small percentage of these 
win in the battle of life; but the great majority prove 
to be a social detriment — a large percentage of their 
progeny proves to be a public care. 

Such untrained simpletons are well supplied with that 
which can produce degenerates, idiots, increase the num- 
ber of orphan-asylums, hospitals, policemen, soldiers 
and prisons ; and they have too little sense to support 
and educate their own offspring. 



154 HUMAN HARMONIES 

Dishonest law-makers, you are the chief among crimi- 
nals ; it is you who have made the laws that deny to the 
weaker citizens the right to be educated ; it is you who 
have made White Slavery and the hotel prostitute com- 
mon everywhere ; it is you who make the poverty that 
creates criminals and then it is you that make laws to 
set up the pretentious machinery to regulate all this 
disturbance that you have made, but which as a matter 
of fact does little more than to hound all these to their 
final doom. 

Is there nowhere, stored up in Nature, any punish- 
ment awaiting you who have done this consciously ? If 
not there should be. 



CHAPTER XXI 

Vampires the Product of Injustice 

THE average individual is an effect of the causes 
he has not learned to control ; personally, most 
men and women are the produced rather than the 
producers. 

It is because the woman has not been encouraged, or 
even allowed to know anything of politics or of eco- 
nomics, that the evolution of female independence has 
not been a normal unfoldment. She does not, there- 
fore, understand the economic causes of most individual 
failures among men; she takes the failure to be nearly 
altogether a personal matter. As to the cause of his 
own failure, however, the average man knows but little 
more than the woman, when the cause happens to be 
economic. Most young women, educated for rich men, 
but married to poor men, blame their husbands for 
their poverty, because they know but little of why it is 
that they are surrounded by abundance of wealth in 
which they have no share. 

This lack of understanding, due to a perverted educa- 
tion, has produced a very large class of poor men's 
wives who are much more ornamental than useful ; they 
feel that if the man can not provide he must take the 
consequences because it is his duty to provide. 
155 



156 HUMAN HARMONIES 

The young husband soon finds that he can not 
afford the luxury of an ornamental wife; she is much 
like the automobile on which the repairs every six 
months equal the first cost, — she makes a very interest- 
ing piece of furniture, but her use is very small. Nor 
does the young husband, knowing no more of economics 
than his wife, and enthralled by the foolishness of his 
day, see why it is that he is unable to meet the expecta- 
tions of his object of worship. 

This fosters a feeling of bitterness among men and 
the belief that there is no such thing as justice operat- 
ing in the world. The sequel to this condition, is that 
we find men setting all sorts of traps to extort from 
other men the means to indulge their shallow wives and 
sweethearts in their desires to rival some vulgar 
neighbor not worth a moment's notice or a second 
thought. 

Of course, this not very small class of badly taught, 
mentally perverted, vampire type of women of our own 
day, is the product of unjust economic conditions — this 
class, together with their male counterpart, is an effect. 
If the reader is a woman, and not one of this type, she 
will not defend the type by taking offense. 

Said one of this vampire type, not long since : " I am 
glad that I am a modern woman — a manager of men in 
a new way. The old-time wife did not understand the 
art of making herself appreciated ; she ruined her attrac- 
tions by working too hard ; she did not understand the 
illusion in the art of dress ; she did not place a proper 
value on herself, nor did she know how to keep her per- 



VAMPIRES 157 

sonal accounts. She was secured too cheaply by giving 
herself to the man. 

" The wise woman of to-day is getting better returns 
for what she has to offer the man for her support and 
amusement than did the old-time housekeeper, washerwo- 
man, slave and baby-tender. The modern woman makes 
herself felt and appreciated, and her every possession 
a home asset; she has learned that she has, in the art 
of dress, in leisure, in withholding her treasures and 
dealing them out in small quantities, a power to hold 
the man and obtain what she wants. Easily obtained 
things, like easily gotten money, can never be appreci- 
ated by either men or women of the common sort. 

" Of course, there have always been a few women 
who, to some extent, understood this art of using the 
special power of their sex; but, thanks to progress 
during the past century, the number of such women has 
greatly increased, so that to-day we find many who have 
learned to apply their power with great skill to gain 
selfish ends. 

" I have learned this for my own use and like the 
application very much. My husband is a railroad man, 
but to meet him on his return home, with my person 
made attractive, — with a smile and a kiss, serves to hold 
him longer and stronger, and to much more easily ob- 
tain the objects of my desires, than were I to meet him 
worn out with the care of babies and the household; 
cross and carelessly dressed. Of course, my husband 
is but a common man and this is my way of meeting 
his requirements. 



158 HUMAN HARMONIES 

" So as a woman, I aim to make the most of my 
resources, — to prepare what my husband wants of me 
for the home-market, always keeping the price high. 
I find a domestic demand for all I am able to supply 
at never less than par value, and often, when I am in 
need of something extra, I inflate prices with watered 
stock. By so conserving my energies as to keep myself 
under fine self-control, I frequently dispose of my stock 
at a premium of five hundred per cent or more. 

" Now," she continued, " do not find fault with my 
method of obtaining what I want, because this husband- 
exploiting is, according to modern business methods, 
perfectly legitimate, I do not claim that my way of 
operating is strictly fair, any more than is the same 
principle when applied in business, but I am getting 
what I want, for one thing, and for another, I feel 
that I am helping my sex get even with the man by 
making him pay well in the present for his past abuses 
of the woman. 

" I am doing precisely what I intend to do ; I have no 
apologies to offer." 

And who can deny that this woman is practicing 
modern business methods in her domestic life? except 
that her method contains much less dishonesty; she 
obtains less in proportion to her effort, — less for noth- 
ing than the landlord. But what she does, contains 
quite a strong tinge of yellow, — it partakes of the 
nature of the de luxe edition of books, made up from 
an old set of battered plates with gaudy, fool-catcher 
bindings, fake revisions, and sold at a very big price 



VAMPIRES 159 

by agents ; it is the twenty-five-cent meal, prepared with 
a few gaudy frills and aided by a squeeking old fiddle 
or two to extract from conventional simpletons and 
bashful purchasers, two dollars or more ; it is the art 
of making with veneer, — with a high price and the awe 
inspired by assumed dignity and a pompous show, — ■ 
shoddy in all lines appear valuable. 

From its first use in theology to frighten the timid 
and unthinking into submission, this art has gradually 
found its way into the hands of every individual and 
every institution of modern life, where the aim is to take 
advantage of the less informed and helpless. It is the 
art of flimflamming the timid and the ignorant with 
sense-glamor or glitter in order to squeeze from them 
money to pay the continuously increasing rents. 

And this much complained-of married-life falsity is 
merely a part of this inflated price, or watered stock; 
high-priced shoddy ; the few getting much and the many 
getting but little; this unjust system that is reflexively 
responsible for the dishonesty with which we find every 
fiber of our modern life permeated. The entire un- 
thinking world is hopelessly under the influence of its 
demoralizing spell. A large percentage of honesty 
among men is impossible under the working of such a 
system. 

We find the more remote cause of this condition to 
be the general ignorance which allows our present mo- 
nopolistic system to exist; it is this purely and simply, 
and the distorted and fungus growth of vampire men 
and women is but one of its many evils. 



160 HUMAN HARMONIES 

The woman here quoted merely echoes the senti- 
ments of unthinking thousands, when she further says : 
" I look upon the activities of this life as a game. 
Mortals must either eat or be eaten. I prefer to be 
one of those who eat and I propose to give as little 
as possible in work for what I eat. 

" Of course, we realize that there is a remote possi- 
bility of there coming to the individual a day of reckon- 
ing for this sort of conduct. But most persons of the 
modern world are willing to take the chance of enjoying 
to-day on borrowed capital of all sorts, while living in 
the hope that by deferring the payment from time to 
time, the obligation may be shirked altogether. 

" We feel that one after another of our illusions 
have been removed by progress, so that few now believe 
that there is either a hell or any exact compensation in 
the laws of Nature; that there is working any moral 
law, or that if there is such law, man can control it 
to suit himself." 

She continues : " The modern interpretation of the 
meaning and use of life is that of the wine, woman and 
the theatre side, the all around sporting life of Omar 
Khayyam's Rubaiyat. This happens to be my interpre- 
tation and use of this now celebrated poem. I think it 
is great, and deservedly popular because of the features 
mentioned above, which so admirably fit it into the 
working fabric of the life of to-day, and particularly 
that of the wealthy classes." 

Many realize that the world is filled with women of 
this type, and with men to correspond. Such a mistaken 



VAMPIRES 161 

view of life is the inevitable outgrowth of our igno- 
rance and our unjust economic condition. By many 
sane and normal men and women, marriage is con- 
sidered as much a partnership as that formed for any 
business purpose, a combination in which both parties 
willingly, even gladly and cheerfully, do their part to 
compel success. But these, on account of the ignorance 
and dishonesty of the majority of those by whom they 
are surrounded, are living and working under a very 
great disadvantage. 

Back in the age of muscle, which progress is slowly 
leaving behind, much of the treatment of the woman 
by man was domineering and unfair. But to-day, as 
we gradually emerge into the age of brain, external 
things are being more and more moved by intangible 
forces ; woman is not only getting even with the 
man but ahead of him in the selfish use of the good 
things of life. So much does this hold true and so 
strongly fortified by public sentiment do we find 
her in her aggressions, that a great many thinking 
young men do not consider marriage a wise under- 
taking. 

So great, indeed, and so rapid has been the evolution 
of the degenerate part of the New Woman type that 
in her aggressive progress she will soon, if she con- 
tinues moving in the same line of change, reach that 
place where she will be a fool if she does not marry and 
the man will be a fool if she does. We must understand, 
however, that this type of woman is in but a small 
way the product of her own effort, of her own making; 



162 HUMAN HARMONIES 

she is more the effect, the fungus reflex of economic 
conditions, of man-made laws. 

Since the beginning of family life, it is probable, 
some men have over-estimated their relative value in the 
combination; figuratively speaking, they have watered 
their stock and forced it on the market. 

Many modern women have learned to do the same 
thing by attraction. The growing appreciation of the 
woman has brought with it a sentiment in her favor that 
the less scrupulous type of women use to their own 
advantage. 

This class has learned to inflate prices with the art of 
dress, — self-decoration, and to use the weaknesses of the 
animal man who has but little of either will or of infor- 
mation. So we see many badly-informed men who mis- 
take the appearance of the woman and the price she 
places upon herself for intrinsic value, learning of his 
mistake only when he finds himself in the merciless 
hands of the vampire with the sentiment of the court 
entirely in her favor. 

The average woman of to-day, because of the fact 
that she is reading more than the average man, is think- 
ing more; it is this that explains her rapidly growing 
freedom of action. Her power resides in the ideas she is 
absorbing. This is too intangible for the average man 
to appreciate — he does not fully understand the impor- 
tance of education. When to her power, gained through 
her reading and thinking, is added the still more subtle 
one of her feelings, we can readily see why it is that 



VAMPIRES 163 

the woman, when once started, goes fast and far into 
freedom and often abuses her power. 

Almost the first thing the man does when his mental 
eyes begin to open with ideas, is to practice the yellow, 
to acquire the art of lying and of business-faking; 
woman, only to a less extent, does the same thing. It 
is for this reason that there are thousands of young 
women who have learned just enough to make of their 
power of attraction a commercial asset. They know 
that there is a certain class of half-evolved young men, 
whose respect and love can be gained and held by the 
price they are obliged to pay. These women have 
learned that the more their company is made to seem a 
privilege, the keener will be the pursuit of the man. 

This old price-appreciation game has been worked 
with more or less success in all ages and in all depart- 
ments of life, to inspire desire and respect in the un- 
thinking mind. It has been the great lever of the 
shoddy vender in all the past ages of the world, and is 
now used by the same yellow crowd, with the power of 
its members increased to the extent that they have 
gained a better working knowledge of the minds of 
those who do not think. 

Men and women, who in their unfoldment have 
reached a high degree of moral stamina, know too much 
to stoop to such methods in any walk of life, nor can 
they be easily worked with this watered- stock bunco 
game. 

The legitimate way of life and action, the way that 
all men and women will have some day sufficiently un- 



164 HUMAN HARMONIES 

folded to know and to practice, is that of giving 
intrinsic values and in making honest representations, 
in all the transactions of life. From those of the young 
man and the young woman in the matrimonial market 
down to those in which articles are sold by merchants 
over the counter — they will sometime learn how very 
much superior is this way of honest values, this making 
everything in life well worth the money paid for it. 

It is true that the genuine article does not, by fair 
methods of making itself known, always find a market ; 
but this is due to the fact that the business world is 
befogged with rascality. However, when an honest 
article is placed by honest methods, it is not likely to 
need the second placing; besides, honest conduct is a 
powerful contribution to the growth of human better- 
ment and to this, every person should contribute a share. 

Vampirism, the taking of something for nothing, the 
shirking of duty, the selling of watered stock and of 
shoddy goods at a high price, faithlessness, laziness and 
grafting, are all wrong ; they are practices of deceit, 
they are founded on lies ; they are false ; they destroy 
confidence among men ; and none of these can ever, in 
more than appearance, be successful — in the final clean- 
up they are, without exception, failures ; they disap- 
point and degrade all within reach of their influence. 

It is no small thing for any human being to possess, 
during the time of his closing years, the feeling that he 
has never practiced in this, our short term of school 
which we call life, any of these infamous arts. 

All the prohibitions, oppressions, restrictions, monop- 



VAMPIRES 165 

olies, wars, police, prisons, doctors, lawyers, judges, 
dishonesty and conventions, are products of ignorance: 
they make trouble to the extent that they by suppres- 
sion prevent natural unfoldment. It is absolutely 
impossible to tie up and hold out of use the factors" 
and energy of progress — and with which the world is 
so plentifully equipped — without having it burst forth 
later on in uncomfortable ways. 

It is suppression of the woman by masculine tyranny 
that explains the inability of the woman to reason. 
This being shut in and out of the world, and denied 
the use of that information which is the material of 
reason, keeps her from reasoning. 

To suppose that woman is not equipped with reason- 
ing possibilities is a mistake, but she has not only not 
been encouraged to reason, — her attempts to reason 
have always been snubbed and ridiculed. 

Woman will reason more and better in the proportion 
that she finds it paying better and in the proportion 
that progress frees her from her own foolishness and 
fears, and from conventional tyranny. Men do the 
same thing. 

The vampire is not a female but a human being and a 
ghost. The reason that we are more offended with the 
female grafter than with the male, is that we are 
not so accustomed to the female grafter; but the 
cause of both is suppression and the resulting igno- 
rance which has prevented the natural use of human 
energy. 

One who has observed women to any great extent, 



166 HUMAN HARMONIES 

will have noticed how marvelously well they can reason 
whenever their purpose is better served by reasoning. 
But having other resources to achieve their ends, they 
do not depend very much on reason ; they are plastic, 
they have a quick ability to change that enables them 
to adapt themselves to the requirements of any situa- 
tion — they can drift or pull with the tide. 

For this reason, whenever a woman wants a thing 
that reason would prevent her from obtaining — when 
she desires something childishly and does not mean to 
be fair about it but wants it, right or wrong, she always 
has her reason-defeater " because " to fall back upon 
as the first step in a series of maneuvers to secure the 
desired end. 

In case " because " fails she resorts to her next 
weapon of tears; if this fails her she can brighten up 
and consult her doctor with his inexhaustible supply of 
prescriptions, reaching as they do from chronic in- 
validism to a six months' outing and divorce. 

This usually brings the " old man" to terms, because 
he knows very well that, however well the wife may be 
looking, how this sentimental public of to-day looks 
upon the matter of her doctoring. 

The wise man so realizes the situation as to know 
that it is either this or something worse; for when it 
comes to working the " old man " by an idle woman 
who has no sympathy with the struggles of her husband 
her resources are inexhaustible. 

A husband is utterly helpless in the hands of a crafty, 
unsympathetic, unscrupulous vampire of a wife; as a 



VAMPIRES 167 

last resort, she can work up any sort of a tragedy if 
it serves to gratify her whims or her desires. 

Theatrically speaking, the woman can act her part 
much more skillfully than can the man ; she has more 
time to think out and gain tact to use in a battle of 
cunning to defeat masculine reason and muscle. 

Of course, it should be understood that the discus- 
sion here has to do with the woman who belongs to a 
comparatively small class — one of the selfish, untaught, 
morally weak, and unscrupulous women ; one who, as 
Rudyard Kipling says, " does not care " for anybody 
but herself, but who for some not very plain reason, we 
seldom find tied to her male vampire counterpart. 

The thrifty, prudent and moral man who finds him- 
self fastened by marriage to such a woman, has little 
chance to make either terms or peace; his quickest 
and safest way is to give her what earthly goods he 
has, without getting into the courts with a good chance 
of getting also into the penitentiary, because here in 
this modern war with the woman, the man never gets fair 
play. If a woman does not like a man she will fleece 
him without compunction, because her conduct is the 
product of her feelings ; where we find her conscientious 
and moral it is because she feels to be so. Where 
her feelings are not enlisted the meanest of conduct does 
not seem to make her suffer; she can be as remorseless 
as a tigress that slays other animals to feed her young. 

But woman responds much more readily and quickly 
to moral culture than man ; it is due to her educational 
plasticity that her feelings can be much more readily 



168 HUMAN HARMONIES 

trained into moral harmony — she can be reached sym- 
pathetically. And the difference between the moral 
woman and the one lacking in moral attainment is much 
greater than the difference between day and night. 

In the proportion that men and women reach a higher 
degree of differentiation, they will become better and 
more effective co-workers, harmonious companions. Life 
gives much more to two intelligent persons than to two 
unintelligent persons. 



